Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURAL COMPANY BILL

Read a Second time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION BILL

CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL

To be read a Second time Tomorrow.

DARTFORD TUNNEL BILL

Read a Second time and committed.

GAS (UNDERGROUND STORAGE) (CHILCOMB) BILL

To be read a Second time upon Monday next.

LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY CORPORATION BILL

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL

To be read a Second time Tomorrow.

MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL BILL

Read a Second time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

NORTHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL

PORT OF LONDON BILL

To be read a Second time Tomorrow.

RIVER DART NAVIGATION BILL

ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLEGE BILL

Read a Second time and committed.

SAINT MICHAEL PATERNOSTER ROYAL BILL

Order for Second Reading read and discharged; Bill withdrawn.

SAINT PAUL, COVENT GARDEN BILL

SAINT THOMAS APOSTLE (QUEEN STREET) CHURCHYARD BILL

SHOREHAM HARBOUR BILL

Read a Second time and committed.

SOUTH ESSEX WATERWORKS BILL

To be read a Second time Tomorrow.

WHITEHAVEN HARBOUR BILL

Read a Second time and committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — NUCLEAR TESTS

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will now state the course and result of the negotiations between Her Majesty's Government and the Soviet Government which were resumed on 28th November, 1961, for the purpose of agreeing on a treaty banning nuclear weapon tests under effective international control; upon what points agreement has been reached; what points remain outstanding; and what steps are now being taken or planned to resolve the differences still outstanding.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Lord Privy Seal what progress has been made in studying the Soviet plan for the banning of nuclear tests; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. P. Noel-Baker: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement concerning the proposals made recently by Her Majesty's Government's representative to the Nuclear Tests Conference in Geneva.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. J. B. Godber): It has proved impossible to make any headway with these resumed negotiations in view of the Soviet repudiation of those treaty articles already agreed and their refusal to discuss any alternative to their proposals tabled on 28th November. These, as has been made clear at the Conference, are unacceptable to Her Majesty's Government and the United States Government, since they make no provision for any form of international verification and control.
In view of the Soviet attitude, we made a fresh move to avoid deadlock. We proposed that the question of an appropriately controlled nuclear tests ban should be taken up at a very early stage by the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee.
The Soviet Union have now rejected this proposal without themselves making any constructive counter-proposals. The United States and United Kingdom are therefore today suggesting that the Conference should recess until the three Governments are able to establish a common basis for further negotiations.

Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether he realises that the most powerful nations on earth, including the United States, Russia and Great Britain, all possessing nuclear power, have expressed themselves unequivocally in favour of the doctrine of peaceful co-existence? Can the hon. Gentleman state in detail why that doctrine cannot be translated into agreement by the great nations of the world?

Mr. Godber: I wish I could state it in detail here. We shall, of course, be starting, or we hope to be starting, disarmament discussions over the whole front in March, and I hope very much that we shall make progress then. This is undoubtedly a disappointment.

Mr. Allaun: While agreeing with the Anglo-American statement that the nuclear test ban should be given priority in the March talks, may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman will urge the American Government to withhold tests until that date, otherwise the conference will be doomed? If he made such a proposal, would it not then be possible to avoid the serious decision which apparently he has just announced?

Mr. Godber: We have to bear in mind that the tests were resumed not by the United States but by the Russians. The Russians unilaterally abrogated the suspension, which had been going on and by which we and the Americans had loyally abided, with this massive series of tests. In the light of that, I cannot add anything to what has been said previously on the subject.

Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Will the hon. Gentleman ensure that the deadlock in

the Nuclear Tests Conference is not simply transferred to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee? Will he also ensure that disarmament is discussed and not postponed until after the tests question has been settled?

Mr. Godber: It is our intention that the tests discussions shall go on at once. We suggested the transfer because we understood up to now that the Russians were prepared to consider international verification within the context of general disarmament, whereas they had refused to do it in the case of nuclear tests. Because we wanted to get over that hurdle we made this proposition. It was not our intention to delay things. We wanted to see progress.

Mr. Hughes: Would not these conferences have a better chance of success if they were held in public in order to bring the force of world opinion to bear upon them?

Mr. Godber: That is a rather doubtful proposition. Sometimes when they are held in public we find people speaking for the record rather than trying to get agreement.

Oral Answers to Questions — EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a further statement on the negotiations regarding Britain's entry into the Common Market, and the extent to which Her Majesty's Government are now prepared to accept the political integration of Western Europe.

Sir Richard Pilkington: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement on the progress on the negotiations with the Common Market Governments.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: asked the Lord Privy Seal why the British negotiations for entry into the European Common Market are being held up until 22nd February.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath): Since my statement on 18th December, I have attended a further meeting of Ministers in Brussels on 18th January. We again reviewed the progress made by officials


and agreed that they should continue their work on nil tariffs, Commonwealth exports of manufactures and the problems of the underdeveloped members of the Commonwealth. They will also prepare for the next Ministerial meeting on 22nd February when in addition we shall begin the discussions on agriculture. As regards political integration, I have nothing to add to my answers to Questions on 29th November.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is it not about time the Minister was frank with us? Is he aware that on 17th January in the Bundestag the West German Chancellor said that he hoped that agreement on economic integration would be a powerful impulse towards quick political integration? Can he say whether he agrees with that? Can he say without equivocation whether he supports or opposes political integration with Europe?

Mr. Heath: Our views on political integration were very clearly expressed in paragraph 22 of my speech in Paris on 10th October.

Sir Richard Pilkington: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a very great need in the country for far more instruction and information about what is happening, particularly if the Government want to have the nation with them?

Mr. Heath: Yes, Sir. I am indeed anxious that there should be the fullest understanding in the nation of the issues involved. At the same time, I think the House appreciates the difficulty about revealing details of confidential negotiations while they are going on.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: Was the delay till 22nd February longer than was required or was wanted by the British, and how far was the length of that delay due to the wish of the Six to have time to make preparations and co-ordinate their attitude and policies towards anything that the British negotiators might propose?

Mr. Heath: As the agreement about a common agricultural policy was not reached between the Six until 14th January, it was not possible for us to start discussions about agriculture at the meeting on 18th January. It was then felt that, as the texts of the agreements were not available and were not likely

to be available for some time, it was better to fix 22nd February as the date of the meeting, which gives time for us to study the texts and also for the Six to have consultations between themselves.

Mr. H. Wilson: Going back to a previous answer, while the House understands the difficulties about giving details while negotiations are in progress, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us why the Leader of the House was able to give many of the details in a speech to the Midlands Area Council of the Conservative Party—a lot of things which so far the Lord Privy Seal has refused to give the House?

Mr. Heath: If the right hon. Gentleman reads the speech of the Leader of the House, he will find nothing in it which was not contained in my Paris speech of 10th October. I feel somewhat modest about repeating my own speeches.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: While I appreciate what my right hon. Friend says about the confidential nature of detailed negotiations, might I ask whether it would not help the purpose which my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Richard Pilkington) has in mind and has just expressed if at least information could be given on some of the more fundamental matters; for example, in the context of Commonwealth safeguards, whether these are to be permanent or merely temporary, and whether they are to take account of growth of trade or are merely related to past and present performances?

Mr. Heath: My right hon. and learned Friend will find both matters dealt with in my Paris speech, and the outcome is, of course, what we are negotiating about.

Mr. H. Wilson: But does not the right hon. Gentleman recognise that between the statement by the Prime Minister at the end of July last and the statement which he made in Paris last October there is a very wide gulf, particularly on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) dealing with political integration? Is he aware that he owes it to the House to explain much more fully than he has done the reason


why he moved so far between the time we debated this matter in August and the time he made his statement in Paris?

Mr. Heath: That is an entirely different question from the question which the right hon. Gentleman asked just now, which was about making further information available to the country. We are anxious that everything possible should be done by the Government or hon. Gentlemen opposite, or by publications, of which there have been a considerable number, through the Press and others, to make these issues plain.

Mr. Ridley: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will publish each agreement made with the European Economic Community as the negotiations proceed.

Mr. Heath: No, Sir.

Mr. Ridley: In that case, if my right hon. Friend will not publish each detail as it is agreed, will he consult the Leader of the House about allowing at least two months of Parliamentary time for discussing the final result? It is far too big a subject to take in one debate.

Mr. Heath: I am afraid that it is not possible in trying to solve a number of intricate and inter-related problems of the kind we are dealing with in these negotiations to publish any particular item as one reaches a particular stage of the solution. When we reach the conclusion of the negotiations, I will bear in mind my hon. Friend's suggestion about time for the House to debate the matter.

Mr. Bellenger: Is not the right hon. Gentleman of the opinion that the House, having given the Government authority to negotiate, should allow him and his colleagues to carry on these negotiations and not make in the interim statements which will only be used by those opposed to him as propaganda for their own purposes?

Mr. Heath: I said at the beginning of the negotiations that I would do my best to make information available to the House. Naturally, we are grateful for any consideration that we may receive of the kind indicated by the right hon. Gentleman.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Despite what my right hon. Friend has said in answer to

this Question and the previous one, would he not agree that what is happening in the Fouchet Committee is of very great importance with regard to political integration? Would he not agree that it is quite possible that if the Fouchet Committee goes on as it is the whole situation will change politically while he himself is negotiating the economic aspect?

Mr. Heath: It is undoubtedly the case that the deliberations of the Fouchet Committee are of great importance. We have indicated that at a suitable time and in an appropriate way we should naturally like to be consulted in the negotiations. We have been given the substance of the documents which have been placed before the Committee, which is still studying them at official level.

Mr. Russell: asked the Lord Privy Seal what stage negotiations have now reached regarding conditions under which citizens of Commonwealth countries will be able to obtain jobs in this country in the event of the United Kingdom joining the European Economic Community, and regarding the conditions which will be applicable to citizens of member countries of the Community.

Mr. Heath: I have nothing to add to my Written Replies to Questions on this subject on 29th November and 5th December, 1961.

Mr. Russell: Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that, if we join the Common Market and if the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill goes through in its present form, Commonwealth citizens will not be worse off in this respect than citizens of the Six, particularly after the transitional period is over?

Mr. Heath: I told the House a short time ago that I dealt with this matter in my speech in Paris, when I said that we would wish to discuss with the Commission and the Six certain aspects of the Treaty of Rome which were not a matter of direct negotiations, apart from the three matters mentioned in the debate in the House. We have not yet reached that stage in our negotiations.

Mr. Manuel: asked the Lord Privy Seal what steps he has now taken during his discussions with the representatives


of the Common Market countries to agree an alteration of the provisions of Article 85 of the Rome Treaty which would prohibit British industrial enterprises fixing either directly or indirectly their purchase or selling prices if the United Kingdom were to become a member of the Common Market.

Mr. Heath: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply which I gave to a supplementary question from the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Ham, South (Mr. Oram) on 29th November.

Mr. Manuel: Does not the Lord Privy Seal know that many small industrial concerns in this country are anxious about losing their autonomy and possibly their power to fix buying and selling prices if Article 85 is not drastically altered? Cannot he say something which would allay the anxieties of those firms, some of them in my constituency?

Mr. Heath: I have not met this anxiety, but there may be some misunderstanding in the mind of the hon. Member, and if there is I should like to remove it. Article 85 of the Treaty deals solely with the removal of restrictive practices and is, therefore, designed to deal with price fixing by monopolies and not in any way to prevent small individual firms from fixing their own prices.

Mr. Manuel: Would the Lord Privy Seal look at Article 85 again? It is quite definite and says that industrial concerns in this country would be prohibited from fixing their own buying or selling prices for the commodities which they produce. Can he give the assurance that, within the arrangements he is trying to make, these firms will have such freedom, quite apart from monopoly practices?

Mr. Heath: On each of the two last occasions when the hon. Member mentioned this matter he asked me to look at it again. I have done so, and I am quite clear that Articles 85 and 86 are concerned with monopolistic practices.

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Lord Privy Seal if, in the course of his negotiations for United Kingdom entry into the Common Market, he has been given the full text of the discussions taking place between members of the European Economic Community with regard to the

agricultural provisons; and to what extent the position taken by the French Government in these discussions has caused British policy regarding the protection of domestic agricultural and temperate zone Commonweath products to be changed.

Mr. Fell: asked the Lord Privy Seal (1) what is the Government's policy in the forthcoming agricultural negotiations with the Rome Treaty Powers, in view of the statement by Dr. Sicco Mansholt, Chairman of the European Economic Community, Agricultural Commission, that Great Britain will have to accept the main provisions of the European Common Market's agricultural policy if she wants to join; and
(2) in view of the terms of agreement reached by the Rome Treaty powers on a common agricultural policy, what proposals he has for future negotiations for Great Britain's entry into the Common Market, bearing in mind the assurances given by Her Majesty's Government to British agriculture and horticulture.

Mr. Walker: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will publish a White Paper giving the full details of the agricultural agreement of the European Economic Community together with details as to the estimated effect of this agreement upon Commonwealth trade and British agriculture in the event of the United Kingdom joining the community.

Mr. Heath: The texts of the agreements reached by the members of the European Economic Community on their common agricultural policy are in course of examination by a special Committee of jurists and linguists from the member countries with a view to simultaneous publication in the four Community languages. I will arrange for copies in French to be placed in the Library of the House as soon as they are available. As Her Majesty's Government are not responsible for the publication of this document, it would not be appropriate to publish an English translation as a White Paper, but as soon as a translation is ready I will arrange for it to be made available to Members in an appropriate way. As regards the effect of our membership of the Community on Commonwealth trade and British agriculture, this will depend on


the arrangements which we are able to negotiate. The Government's policy remains as set out in my statement in Paris on 10th October.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is it not becoming increasingly clear that pledges which have been made to safeguard British agriculture and Commonwealth trade will have to be withdrawn if agreement is reached on the lines as agreed by the Six? Will the negotiations which take place be on the basis of the negotiations that have now been agreed among the Six or will the right hon. Gentleman want a completely new agreement?

Mr. Heath: The hon. Member has no basis on which to draw his first deduction. It is not true that pledges will have to be withdrawn. As to negotiations, the important thing is that the Six have reached a basis for a common agricultural policy on which we can negotiate.

Mr. Walker: Will my right hon. Friend consider publishing with the text of the agreement at least some of the factual information which can be provided at the moment in connection with the effect on Commonwealth trade, for example, the total levy which would be put on it if the agreement applied to it?

Mr. Heath: I see no point in endeavouring to work out information of this kind about a situation which is not what we are going to end with. We are in the process of negotiating to alter it.

Mrs. Castle: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that he will never agree to an arrangement whereby this country has to put import levies on Commonwealth food?

Mr. Heath: I have given assurances to the House of Commons on a number of occasions and there is no need to repeat them.

Oral Answers to Questions — FISHING VESSEL "RED CRUSADER" (INQUIRY)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he is now in a position to make a statement on the course and result of the international commission of inquiry into the "Red Crusader" incident which was due to begin on 21st November, 1961.

Mr. Godber: No, Sir. The case is still before the Commission, the proceedings of which are being held in private.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister of State realise that this inquiry is taking a very long time and has an important bearing upon the law of the sea, particularly in the North Sea? Will he keep his eye on it and make a full report to the House and arrange for the full debate on it when the report is ready?

Mr. Godber: I will certainly keep my eye on it, but it is because of its important and far-reaching implications that it is taking a long time.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether it is still the policy of Her Majesty's Government that united Germany should be free to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Mr. Heath: It is the policy of Her Majesty's Government that Germany should be reunited on the basis of self-determination and become an independent sovereign state, free to join any defensive security pact, or none, if it so wished.

Mr. Zilliacus: Why do the Government cling to a condition which, as prominent Americans like George F. Kennan and Walter Lippmann have often pointed out, could be imposed only after victory against the Soviet Union? Do they not want negotiations, or are they being blackmailed by the German Government which does think in terms of force to recover its lost territories?

Mr. Heath: I do not regard this as a condition. Surely it is an opportunity for self-determination and free decision.

British Forces

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Lord Privy Seal what agreement has been concluded with the Government of the German Federal Republic concerning the use of British forces in Western Germany against internal subversion.

Mr. Heath: None, Sir.

Mr. Zilliacus: In that case, why did the right hon. Gentleman tell the House on 18th October that the presence of Western troops in Western Germany was a very important guarantee against internal subversion? Is it the Government's policy in N.A.T.O., as it admittedly is in CENTO and S.E.A.T.O., to use British troops to put down popular risings, with or without the assent of the Government concerned, in the name of defence against internal subversion? Is that the Government's idea of defence?

Mr. Heath: As I pointed out in a rather lengthy letter which I sent to the hon. Gentleman on 15th January when I saw his Question on the Order Paper and deduced what might be his thinking in this matter, in that debate, when I referred to this matter, I was referring to West Berlin and not West Germany. If the hon. Member looks at the context in which that remark was made—the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly) was speaking at the time—he will see that I was obviously referring to West Berlin. However, I am very glad that he has given me the opportunity of saying so publicly.

Mr. Warbey: Why is there this differentiation between West Berlin and West Germany?

Mr. Heath: Because we have responsibilities as one of the Powers in Berlin.

Oral Answers to Questions — COUNCIL OF EUROPE (RECOMMENDATION)

Mr. J. Hynd: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement on the recent discussions by the Deputies of the Committee of Ministers with regard to Recommendation 290 of the Council of Europe concerning atmospheric pollution; and what action will be taken by Her Majesty's Government in regard to this Recommendation.

Mr. Heath: The Council of Europe Consultative Assembly's proposal for a conference on air pollution is still under consideration by the Committee of Ministers' Deputies. Her Majesty's Government are giving serious consideration to the issues raised by this proposal.

Mr. Hynd: Will the Minister realise that this is probably the first opportunity we have had of trying to bring together all the multifarious experience and activities of different countries in this connection? Will he give close attention to the necessity for assisting in this direction by the implementation of that report?

Mr. Heath: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — EGYPT (BRITISH PROPERTY)

Mr. Dance: asked the Lord Privy Seal how many United Kingdom nationals have been successful in their applications to the Egyptian sequestration authorities for the release of their property.

Mr. Heath: By 31st December, 1961, 4,960 United Kingdom Nationals had applied to the Egyptian Sequestration authorities for the release of their property and release agreements had been signed, or were ready for signature, for 3,302 of these properties.

Mr. Dance: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Has he any information about the condition of property which is still in Egypt? Secondly, can he give any measure of hope to people whose property is still there, much of it of sentimental value, including, as he knows, wedding presents in the case of one of my constituents?

Mr. Heath: It is not possible to give a general opinion about the state of property which remains, but if my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind, we will try to obtain that information for him. As far as we are able to see, the process of desequestration is continuing at about the normal rate.

Mr. Wall: Can my right hon. Friend say how many of the number quoted have been allowed to repatriate the sum of £5,000 a head, as agreed in the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty?

Mr. Heath: I cannot give the figure for the transfer of £5,000. As my hon. Friend knows, by arrangement with Her Majesty's Government it was later altered to £1,000. We understand that for that figure approval has been given in 231 out of 260 applications.

Mr. Wall: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he has now received an explanation from the Egyptian Government of the recent seizure of the property of British nationals; and what action he is taking to secure the rights of these British subjects.

Mr. Heath: I assume my hon. Friend refers to the recent sequestration measures. The United Arab Republic Government have now assured Her Majesty's Ambassador in Cairo that they are now examining the problem of British property affected by these measures and that they will remain in contact with him on the subject.

Mr. Wall: Would my night hon. Friend consider approaching the Governments of other foreign nationals also affected by this order, which was designed primarily for use against Egyptian subjects, to see what joint action could be taken?

Mr. Heath: We have approached them and are in consultation already with them.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED NATIONS

South Africa

Mrs. Castle: asked the Lord Privy Seal how the United Kingdom delegate to the Special Political Committee of the United Nations voted on the resolution calling on the United Nations to institute economic sanctions against South Africa.

Mr. Godber: There were two such resolutions. The United Kingdom voted against one and abstained on the other in Committee. In Plenary, the first was withdrawn. We voted for the second after the paragraphs referring to economic sanctions had been rejected by the Assembly.

Mrs. Castle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that even the moderate Monrovian group of African States now meeting in Lagos has passed a resolution calling on Britain, France and the United States to bring immediate political and economic pressure to bear on South Africa to compel her to abandon her apartheid policies? Will not Her Majesty's Government alienate even such moderate members of the Commonwealth as Tanganyika and Nigeria by this kind of cowardly action, or lack of action, in the United Nations?

Mr. Godber: I reject the hon. Lady's suggestion that there was anything cowardly about this. We have made our policy about sanctions quite clear. We do not believe that that is the way in which to achieve the results which everybody in the House wants—a change of attitude on the part of the South African Government. We have made our abhorrence of apartheid abundantly clear. On this occasion in the Assembly we were by no means isolated, as the hon. Lady seems to assume. At the very least there were 26 nations voting with us, and on many occasions there were far more than that.

Mr. H. Wilson: Since the hon. Gentleman takes credit for the vote on the final resolution on 28th November, will he say why it was that on 19th December the Government abstained on the subsequent resolution on South-West Africa, which was carried by 90 votes to nil with four absentions? In view of that resolution, pressing for independence and national sovereignty for the people of South-West Africa—

Mr. Speaker: That appears to be a totally different question.

Indonesia and Dutch New Guinea

Sir Richard Pilkington: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will instruct the United Kingdom representative at the United Nations to raise the declared intention of Indonesia to attack Dutch New Guinea as a threat to peace.

Mr. Heath: No Sir. It is for the parties concerned to do so if they wish, but I think the United Nations Acting Secretary-General's endeavours to arrange negotiations offer a more satisfactory course to follow at present.

Sir Richard Pilkington: Would my right hon. Friend agree that if there were aggression against this State the next step would be aggression against Australian territory, and will he make plain our position?

Mr. Heath: We have made absolutely plain that we should deplore any attempt to settle the problem by the use of force.

United Nations Bonds

Mr. Warbey: asked the Lord Privy Seal what arrangements he is making to enable British citizens to buy United Nations ponds in small units.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Lord Privy Seal what amount of United Nations bonds Her Majesty's Government propose to purchase.

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether Her Majesty's Government has been invited to subscribe to the United Nations £71 million bond issue; and whether any decision has been taken in regard to the matter.

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether Her Majesty's Government have decided to subscribe for United Nations bonds; and for what figure.

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Lord Privy Seal what purchase of United Nations bonds has been made by Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Prentice: asked the Lord Privy Seal what purchase of United Nations bonds will be made by Her Majesty's Government; and what arrangements will be made for their purchase by the general public.

Mr. Heath: Her Majesty's Government intend to respond to the Secretary-General's appeal for subscriptions to the United Nations Bond Issue by buying bonds, before the end of 1963, within a maximum total of 12 million dollars. This is in accordance with the policy of Her Majesty's Government to support the United Nations Organisation and to do what they can to ensure its efficiency and solvency. In deciding the amounts and timing of our purchases we shall take into account the cash requirements of the Organisation and the extent to which other countries contribute. The terms and conditions governing the Bond Issue make no provision for the sale of bonds to individuals. We regard the Issue of Bonds as a once-for-all measure designed to give the United Nations an opportunity to put its finances in order. This can only be achieved with the cooperation of its members and we look to all member governments to fulfil their financial obligations towards the Organisation.

Mr. Warbey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the proposed amount represents only about one-seventh of the amount for which President Kennedy has asked Congress sanction? As this displays a rather half-hearted loyalty towards the United Nations, cannot the right hon. Gentleman at least undertake to guarantee to purchase a further 12 million dollars worth and put them on resale to the British public, possibly through the United Nations Association, so that the British people may have an opportunity of showing that they have greater loyalty to the United Nations than have hon. Members opposite?

Mr. Heath: As I understand the United Nations resolution, it is not intended that these bonds should be held by private individuals. Bearing in mind that this is a question of foreign exchange for this country, I think that the Government are responding generously to the Secretary-General's appeal.

Mr. E. Johnson: Will my right hon. Friend keep the purchase of these bonds down to the minimum figure until the 87 nations which have defaulted on their obligations have done something to meet them? Will not the fact of our buying the bonds mean that we are paying twice over, once for our share and once for theirs, and will it not encourage those nations to remain in default?

Mr. Heath: I have explained that we regard this as a particular effort in order to try to deal with the immediate financial problem of the United Nations. But I am sure that the whole House is anxious that all member countries should carry out their financial obligations.

Mr. Mayhew: Is it not just as well that we should make this contribution, even though it is smaller than it should be, in order to help to erase the unfortunate impression created by the speech of the Foreign Secretary about the United Nations? Instead of expressing a pious hope that defaulting countries will pay up, have the Government considered invoking Article 19 and challenging the right of defaulting countries more than two years in arrears to vote at the General Assembly?

Mr. Heath: I do not believe that any of the defaulting countries is yet more than two years in arrears.

Mr. H. Wilson: Formosa.

Mr. Heath: I do not know about that. Certainly we can examine that. In the payments countries make, there is a certain time lag as to when they deliver the dues. All countries, even those which are regular payers, have special arrangements. As far as the rest of them are concerned, they are not in default of their normal payments. The problem of whether payments for the Congo operation and the Middle Eastern operation should not also be considered within the context of Article 19 has been referred to the International Court. If the International Court ruled that they were the same as payments under Article 19, that would change the situation very materially.

Mr. Prentice: Does the Lord Privy Seal agree that it is a vital aspect of our foreign policy that the United Nations should recover from its financial difficulty, that its operations in the Congo and the Middle East should be enabled to continue and that it should be able, if, unfortunately, it becomes necessary, to launch similar operations elsewhere? In the circumstances, will the Government keep open the possibility of buying a much larger share of these bonds if other countries do not take up as many as we hope?

Mr. Heath: I have given the House a full statement about the Government's decision, the reasons why we have taken it and the way in which we shall carry out the purchase of the bonds.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Foreign Secretary's excellent speech voiced, if it did not somewhat understate, the deep feelings in this country? Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people in this country will regret this decision on the bonds, which they believe to have been taken under United States pressure? Will the Government endeavour to see that those voluble members of the United Nations who do not pay their contributions in fact pay up before any more British money is sunk in this organisation?

Mr. Heath: Perhaps my hon. Friend recalls the concluding paragraphs of my noble Friend's speech. If I may quote them, he said,

Whatever its faults, the aims of the United Nations are sound and its aspirations true. Britain cannot afford lightly to discard an instrument dedicated to peace which is struggling to put together the elements of peacekeeping machinery, however elementary it may appear.
It is therefore entirely consistent with that belief and policy that we should purchase these bonds and support the financial position of the United Nations.

Mr. Lipton: Does what the Lord Privy Seal has just said mean this: that the Government's decision, announced just now, really represents the policy of the Foreign Secretary?

Mr. Heath: This represents the policy of my noble Friend and of the Government as a whole. I think that the hon. Member's question and that of the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) both indicate the difficulty which some hon. Members have of distinguishing between support of an organisation and its aims and at the same time constructively criticising it in an attempt to see that it becomes efficient.

Mr. H. Wilson: While we welcome this decision and wish that the Government had bought a larger quantity of bonds, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that this decision is necessary not only to begin the hard job of reassuring other nations about our support for the United Nations but also, after the revolt of hon. Members opposite on the question of subscribing to the United Nations in the debate in December, to show whether the Government are in a position to govern in respect of matters concerning the United Nations?

Mr. Heath: There is no question of the Government not being able to govern. That is the main reason why the right hon. Gentleman and his friends are still on the Opposition benches.

Oral Answers to Questions — CONGO (KATANGA)

Mr. Rankin: asked the Lord Privy Seal what representations were made to Her Majesty's Government by the United Nations, during the period in which Dr. O'Brien was the United Nations special representative in the Congo, in respect of British policy in Katanga: and what replies he sent.

Mr. Heath: As the local representative of the United Nations in Elisabethville from June to mid-November, Dr. O'Brien was in frequent touch with Her Majesty's Consul there, and they discussed all aspects of the Katanga situation. Close contact between Her Majesty's Government and the United Nations has also naturally been maintained through our representatives both in Leopoldville and in New York.

Mr. Rankin: That reply to the question is riot complete. Is it not the case that the statement made at the time by Dr. O'Brien has been largely confirmed by the speech of the Foreign Secretary at Berwick-on-Tweed, in which he showed that he held the United Nations in very poor esteem indeed? How can the Foreign Secretary carry out the policy of a body for which he has shown such complete disregard?

Mr. Heath: I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's remarks about my noble Friend's speech. In any case, the House will have, a full opportunity of discussing the speech at the beginning of next week.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Lord Privy Seal (1) what orders were given to United Nations troops in Katanga regarding the taking of prisoners; what inquiries have been held by the United Nations into the conduct of such troops; how many have been court-martialled; of what charges they were accused; and what were the results;
(2) what representations have been made to the United Nations by Her Majesty's Government for an investigation into the deaths of M. Serge Olivet, head of the International Red Cross in Katanga, and two other of its members, Mme. Vroonen and Mr. Smedding; and what inquiry has been made into complaints of the bombing of, or firing upon, Red Cross hospitals, vehicles and personnel in Katanga.

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will instruct the United Kingdom representative in the United Nations Organisation to press for an independent inquiry into the bombing of hospitals, attacks on ambulances and civilians, rape and other acts of violence by members of the United Nations forces in Katanga.

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Lord Privy Seal what representations he has made to the Secretary General of the United Nations in regard to the behaviour and lack of discipline of Ethiopian troops under United Nations command stationed in Elisabethville.

Mr. Godber: The Government have expressed their concern to the United Nations Organisation about allegations reflecting on the behaviour of United Nations forces in the Katanga. The United Nations Secretariat has informed the Government that instructions to their troops were that gendarmerie prisoners should be disarmed and held in protective custody; mercenaries should be handled in accordance with the relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions. When allegations began to circulate that United Nations troops had exceeded these instructions, special measures were taken to investigate them and to punish offenders.
Certain generalised allegations of misconduct by United Nations troops have been investigated. Two cases of rape appear to have been substantiated; one or two cases of loot have also been confirmed. I am informed that those found guilty have been punished Some cases remain to be dealt with.
As regards requests for an independent inquiry into these events, I am not convinced that a general inquiry would be useful. At the request of the Internatiolal Red Cross the United Nations have already agreed to conduct an inquiry into the deaths of Monsieur Olivet and his two fellow International Red Cross workers.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him whether the United Nations colonel who told the French newspaper Figaro
I do not take any white prisoners
is still in Katanga? Would it not be more appropriate to accede to the request by the International Committee of the Red Cross for an independent inquiry rather than have an inquiry by the United Nations, under whose orders these alleged atrocities were committed?

Mr. Godber: The request was from the International Red Cross to the United Nations, and I understand that


the proposal has been accepted. I think we must therefore wait to see the outcome. I have no confirmation of the case of the colonel to which my hon. Friend has referred.

Mr. E. Johnson: In view of the fact that there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what has been happening in Katanga, and that we are, after all, paying these United Nations troops and are responsible for their actions, will my right hon. Friend not reconsider this matter of an independent inquiry, which seems most desirable?

Mr. Godber: I think that it is best to await the results of the present investigations which the United Nations is carrying out, but obviously we can make further representations later on, if necessary. There have been so many allegations from different sides—they have not merely come from one side—that it is important to get the facts clear.

Dr. Johnson: Is my hon. Friend aware that his reply, in the view of many people, will not meet the case? This is a crisis of confidence in the United Nations for many people in this country. Is he aware that they want a general inquiry to find out what has been happening on both sides in Katanga? Will he press this matter and issue a White Paper?

Mr. Godber: This is a matter for the United Nations. We have discussed it with its representatives in New York. Whenever any case arises, our representatives there discuss the matter with the United Nations Secretariat. As far as we can, we follow these cases up in that way. It is not for us to initiate the independent inquiry suggested here. Let us await the outcome of the present investigations before taking further action.

Mr. H. Wilson: While we welcome the fullest possible inquiry into all these allegations of atrocities by both sides—by mercenaries as well as by United Nations forces—may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether, in order to get this matter in balance with his hon. Friends, he will make available information, which I understand is in the possession of the Foreign Office, about the extent to which mercenaries were using hospitals for firing on United Nations

troops, about the extent to which military vehicles were being painted with the red cross, and about the extraordinary fact that the number of ambulances said to have been damaged by United Nations forces far exceeds the number of ambulances known to be in the Congo?

Mr. Godber: It is these counter conflicting claims which make the whole thing so difficult to see. There are certainly allegations on both sides. This is not a one-sided matter. These are matters for the United Nations rather than for Her Majesty's Government at the present time.

Sir G. Nicholson: Is my hon. Friend aware that the United Nations is acting in our name, amongst those of other nations? Nothing is to be lost by any side in the discovery of the truth. Will he, therefore, initiate moves in the United Nations for a full and impartial inquiry into the allegations affecting both sides?

Mr. Godber: As I say, we have already discussed this on various occasions with the Acting Secretary-General, and, of course, our permanent representative in New York continues to do so whenever any new factors arise. It has been extremely difficult to get at the facts because there have been so many varying reports. But I think that we should wait until the findings of the existing inquiries which the United Nations is carrying out are made available.

Mr. A. Henderson: Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity of rejecting the suggestion put forward by the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) that these atrocities were committed by order of the United Nations Command?

Mr. Biggs-Davison: I did not say that.

Mr. Henderson: If the Minister of State is not in a position to do so, will he invite the United Nations to make an explanatory statement or a denial at the earliest possible opportunity?

Mr. Godber: I was not aware that my hon. Friend made such a charge. Certainly I do not think anyone would for one moment accuse the United


Nations command of deliberately giving instructions of that nature.

Mr. Mayhew: Will the inquiry also make investigation into the details of the campaign of organised atrocity propaganda against the United Nations?

Dr. Johnson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I beg to give notice that, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I propose to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to deny that I took these allegations as established. I invite the hon. Gentleman opposite to consult HANSARD.

Mr. Speaker: No point of order arises, but the denial will have been heard.

Oral Answers to Questions — ANGLO-PORTUGUESE ALLIANCE

Mr. D. Foot: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether Her Majesty's Government will now communicate with the Government of Portugal with a view to the termination of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.

Mr. Parker: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will now give notice to terminate the British alliance with Portugal.

Mr. Heath: I have nothing to add to my answer to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) on the 24th January.

Mr. D. Foot: In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton), did not the right hon. Gentleman say that the Treaty of 1661 was superseded by the arrangement of 1889, the terms of which specifically repeat the undertaking in the Treaty
…to defend and protect all the conquests or colonies belonging to the Crown of Portugal against all his enemies"?
Do Her Majesty's Government regard that arrangement as being still in force? If so, does it cover Angola and Mozambique?

Mr. Heath: The Treaty is, of course, still in force, but, as has been made perfectly plain publicly and in this House, an explanation was given to the Portuguese Ambassador about our views on

recent events. It was also made clear that responsibility lies upon a Government affected to call for a treaty to be invoked if they so desire.

Mr. Parker: What is the value of the treaty to Portugal, considering that Her Majesty's Government have no intention of applying it to her colonies?

Mr. Heath: Without accepting the implications in the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, this matter goes wider than the question only of colonies.

Sir A. V. Harvey: While deprecating Portugal's actions in Angola—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]—I ask my right hon. Friend to bear in mind that Portugal, in making bases in the Azores available to the allies during the last war, saved thousands of British lives. Will he take that into account?

Mr. Strachey: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be much mare dignified to terminate this treaty, which is completely null and void in action and the existence of which obviously brings us into conflict with important members of the Commonwealth? Would it not be very much better to face the facts and see that this treaty is terminated?

Mr. Heath: No, Sir. I cannot accept the right hon. Gentleman's view. As far as our relationship with the Commonwealth is concerned, we have explained our views about Portuguese colonial policy on a number of occasions. It is fully understood. We have also explained the relationship of the treaty to our actions in the Commonwealth.

Oral Answers to Questions — CONGO (SITUATION)

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a further statement on the position in the Congo.

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will now make a further statement on the present situation in the Congo.

Mr. Heath: Since my last statement Mr. Adoula and Mr. Tshombe have signed an agreement at Kitona, which is now being considered by the Katanga Assembly. Discussions, including


Katanga representatives, are now taking place in Leopoldville on a revision of the Congolese constitution. Talks about mercenaries have been held between the United Nations and Mr. Tshombe, who has dismissed a number of mercenaries, including their leader.
In Northern Katanga Congolese troops owing allegiance to Mr. Gizenga were responsible for the massacre of priests at a Catholic Mission. Another mission at Sola, in South Kivu, was also attacked but the missionaries there are reported to have escaped into the bush. General Lundula is flying to Kongolo with a group of United Nations officials to investigate.
Mr. Gizenga has been dismissed from his post of Vice-Premier, his gendarmerie bodyguard in Stanleyville has been defeated by Congolese Army troops loyal to General Lundula, and he has been taken to Leopoldville where he is now in a military camp outside the town.

Mr. Williams: Will my right hon. Friend recall that a few moments ago when talking about Germany he used words to the effect that it was necessary to give a chance of self-determination and free decision? Will he give an assurance to the House that the same chance will be open to Katanga?

Mr. Heath: The view of the Government about Katanga as a province of the State of the Congo has always been made plain. We do not support the secession of the province of Katanga from the Congo.

Mr. Henderson: Can the Minister say whether the Acting Secretary-General has withdrawn his request for the stationing of observers on the Katanga-Rhodesian border, and, if so, has he given any reason?

Mr. Heath: I understand that the Acting Secretary-General still has this matter under consideration.

Mr. Brockway: Can the right hon. Gentleman clear up the position of Mr. Gizenga? Is he aware that he was residing under United Nations protection and has been handed over to Colonel Mobutu? Is he aware of the considerable apprehension which exists in view of the fact that Colonel Mobutu handed Lumumba over to Tshombe and that a

similar happening may possibly occur in the case of Mr. Gizenga?

Mr. Heath: The information we have is that when he arrived at Leopoldville Mr. Gizenga asked for United Nations protection and this was given. He then asked to leave their protection and go to live in Leopoldville, and that was entirely his own responsibility.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we all very much welcome the statement made by Mr. Tshombe about his decision to clear out the mercenaries? In view of the desirability of this becoming 100 per cent. effective, would the right hon. Gentleman take very seriously the obligation and duty of Her Majesty's Government to see that the frontier is closed to any possible movement of mercenaries in that area?

Sir G. Nicholson: My right hon. Friend has said that Her Majesty's Government do not support the secession of Katanga. Will he clear up the situation? Does that mean that Her Majesty's Government are for or against the use of force to prevent the secession of Katanga? Does Her Majesty's Government admit the right of any portion of the Congo to self-determination?

Mr. Heath: Her Majesty's Government have always indicated their view—this has been the cause of controversy in the House—that these matters should be dealt with by conciliation.

Oral Answers to Questions — CANADA (VISIT OF LORD PRIVY SEAL)

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement on his recent official visit to Canada.

Mr. Heath: I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement I made on 24th January in reply to a Question by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse).

Mr. Williams: Will my right hon. Friend make it quite clear that there will be no sniping attacks on the Canadian Government's policy as there have been in recent months? Is he aware that many of the present misunderstandings, which my right hon. Friend may have now ironed out, need never have arisen had


there been full, free and frank disclosure of what was taking place from the beginning?

Mr. Heath: If there have been sniping attacks on the Canadian Government's policy—and certainly no such complaints were made while I was in Ottawa—they have not come from Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Walker: May I ask whether during his talks with the Canadian Ministers my right hon. Friend expressed the pleasure of the United Kingdom Government that during the period of the Diefenbaker Administration Canadian imports from United Kingdom have increased by nearly 30 per cent.? Did he discuss with the Canadian Ministers how this very favourable trend might be continued?

Mr. Heath: We had general discussions about all these trade matters.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOUTH AFRICA (MR. ZWANE AND MR. GANYILE)

Mr. Brockway: asked the Lord Privy Seal what representations have been made to the Government of the Republic of South Africa regarding the detention by the South African police of a British protected person, Mr. Ambrose Zwane, secretary of the People's Party, when returning from a conference of the Bechuanaland People's Party.

Mr. Godber: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply given by my hon. Friend to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) on 25th January.

Mr. Brockway: May I ask whether any assurance has been given by the Government of the Republic of South Africa that British subjects passing from one British protectorate to another shall be allowed full transit facilities over the territory of the Republic?

Mr. Godber: We have brought this matter strongly to the attention of South Africa, which, no doubt, contributed to the result in this case. I think that this is a matter which we have made plain to the South African authorities, and we trust that there will be no repetition.

Mr. Mayhew: Is the Minister aware that this is not the only incident of this kind and that there is considerable danger of the number of actions of this kind increasing? Is he aware that he may avoid even greater difficulties in future were he to make perfectly clear now that we take a very serious view of it?

Mr. Godber: I think that we have already taken steps to that end with regard to this particular action.

Mr. Brockway: asked the Lord Privy Seal what information the Government of the Republic of South Africa have provided regarding the alleged kidnapping on 26th August of Anderson Ganyile and two other Africans from Basutoland by South African police.

Mr. Wall: asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a further statement about the arrest and subsequent release of Mr. Ganyile.

Mr. Mayhew: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a further statement on the case of Mr. Ganyile.

Dr. A. Thompson: asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will make a further statement about the alleged kidnapping on 26th August of Mr. Anderson Ganyile and two other Africans.

Mr. Godber: The South African Government have now given us a full account of the circumstances of Mr. Ganyile's arrest by South African police on Basutoland territory. They have informed us that the South African police crossed into Basutoland by mistake while searching for suspected murderers in the South African native trust territory adjoining Basutoland and arrested Mr. Ganyile and his companions under the mistaken impression that they were the individuals for whom they were searching. The South African Government have expressed their regrets at this violation of British territory and they have also released Mr. Ganyile and his companions without pursuing the charges against them. We have left the South African Government in no doubt of the serious view which we take of this violation of Basutoland territory.

Mr. Brockway: Is not this just a shocking delay on the part of the Government of the Republic in providing


our Government with information? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these three men were kidnapped from British territory away back on 26th August? Is he aware that they have been kept in prison ever since, most of the time in solitary confinement? In these circumstances, will the Government not only demand an apology from the Government of the Republic but ask that proper compensation shall be paid to the three men?

Mr. Godber: As I have said, we have already expressed our very serious view of the circumstances. We made continual representations in this case, and that, I believe, has led to the outcome which We have seen. The South African Government are in no doubt of our views about this. Regarding the question of compensation, I understand that Mr. Ganyile is making a claim for compensation from the South African Government. I think that those representations should go forward in his name.

Mr. Wall: What steps are the Administration in Basutoland taking to prevent a repetition of this disgraceful mistake? Where are these three men now, and may I have an assurance that they will be allowed to return to Basutoland?

Mr. Godber: The Basutoland authorities are taking steps to deal with this matter. Mr. Ganyile has returned to Basutoland and has applied for permission to reside there. His application is being considered in the normal way according to the normal procedures of Basutoland.

Mr. Mayhew: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the suggestion that these police officers were not aware that they were in a protected territory and were not aware that the persons they were arresting were Mr. Ganyile and his companions is totally unconvincing? Is the hon. Gentleman also aware that Mr. Ganyile, I understand, wishes to proceed to Durban to make a claim against the Government? Will the hon. Gentleman therefore facilitate his journey to Durban, which I understand has not been granted by the South African Government?

Mr. Godber: On the first part of that question, the facts I related were as given by the South African Government, that

is, as to the history, as they gave them to us. As to the second part, Mr. Ganyile is a South African resident, a South African national, and as such presumably would be subject to South African laws in relation to travel in that territory. I have explained his position in Basutoland.

Dr. Thompson: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind the very strong feeling in Basutoland on this issue—by the Basutoland Freedom Party and the Congress Party—that there should be a full investigation of the matter? Will he press for an inquiry of this kind?

Mr. Godber: Certainly if further facts can be brought to light I shall do that, but the facts we have given, the release secured and the apology given I think clarify the position very much.

Mr. P. Williams: While not always supporting all the attacks made on South Africa, may I ask if my hon. Friend will agree that the issue of compensation is one which can be legitimately pursued in this matter?

Mr. Godber: As I have indicated, Mr. Ganyile proposes to seek compensation. He is a South African national and it is for him to pursue the matter.

Mr. Dugdale: Are we to understand that Her Majesty's Government will support a claim for compensation? That is what we want to know; it is a specific question.

Mr. Godber: As I have indicated, a claim for compensation has gone in. It is for Mr. Ganyile to put the claim forward. I do not think that support from Her Majesty's Government arises at this time.

Mr. H. Wilson: Since the Government are not as simple as the hon. Gentleman is making them appear, will he answer this question? Since the police officers concerned must have known within a few hours that they were in the wrong country, and since this occurred last August and it has taken four or five months to find that the charges which have been laid were not appropriate, will he make absolutely clear here and now that the apology we have had is not sufficient for everything that has happened and that the Government will firmly stand behind Mr. Ganyile in the matter of compensation for this quite illegal detention?

Mr. Godber: I think the two points are separate. On the question of Her Majesty's Government's protest, we have made quite clear that we take a very serious view of what has taken place. As to Mr. Ganyile's application for compensation, I think it should go forward in the normal way. He is a South African citizen and should make his application through the courts.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED NATIONS

Anglo-American Discussions

Mr. Warbey: asked the Lord Privy Seal what conclusions were reached at the Anglo-American discussions on the future of the United Nations.

Mr. Godber: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to my right hon. Friend's reply on 23rd January to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall).

Mr. Warbey: That does not take us very far. Can the Minister of State say specifically what was the outcome of these discussions and whether it is now proposed that there should be alterations in the procedure of the United Nations so that the growing domination of the General Assembly by the uncommitted nations can be counteracted and the supremacy of the Great Powers can be reasserted?

Mr. Godber: That was not the purpose of the discussions. They were general discussions covering a whole range of matters concerned with United Nations procedure and the current session of the General Assembly. As my right hon. Friend indicated, they covered a wide range of topics, but certainly not on the lines the hon. Member has suggested.

TRANSPORT, LONDON AND SOUTHERN REGION (DISLOCATION)

Mr. Strauss: (by Private Notice)asked the Minister of Transport whether he can make any statement about the dislocation of transport services in London and the Southern Region.

The Minister of Transport (Mr. Ernest Marples): This morning there was heavy congestion on the approach roads to London and also in the centre of London. Probably this was partly due to the travelling public's uncertainty

about the extent and effects of unofficial stoppages.
This morning reports which I have received indicate that bus and coach services were operating at full strength, subject, of course, to inevitable traffic delays. Railway working in general was normal, except in the South-Eastern Division of the Southern Region, where about 40 per cent. of normal services were run during the peak hours.
On the Underground, this was the position: on the Central Line about one-third of the services were running; on the Northern Line, one-fifth; on the Metropolitan, Bakerloo and Piccadilly Lines, about one-seventh. On the District Line, there were only a few limited local services.
This afternoon the position on the Underground has detriorated to some extent. Arrangements are being made by British Railways and London Transport to notify the travelling public, through the Press and the B.B.C., of the position and prospects for this evening.

Mr. Strauss: I am grateful to the Minister for that information. Is he aware that we on this side of the House very much regret this unofficial strike and the hardship which it has caused to the travelling public? Will he agree, however, that the railwaymen who have come out on strike were impelled to do so by the mood created throughout the railway service by the Government's interference with their long-established and deeply cherished negotiating machinery? Does he propose to take any action, possibly in conjunction with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and trade union leaders, to prevent a similar traffic dislocation from taking place next week?

Mr. Marples: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman associated himself with deploring these unfortunate strikes. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The right hon. Gentleman has associated himself with deploring these unofficial strikes. The men who came out on strike did so against the advice of the union leaders and of the Leader of the Opposition. They were not compelled to come out on strike. The advice which they were given both from the Opposition and from the Government, as well as from


the union leaders, was that they should not do so.
We ought to express our appreciation to those workers who came to work and obeyed the instructions of their union. I do so on behalf of both sides of the House. The Government will watch what happens today very carefully, because an unofficial strike for one day provides an opportunity of studying what effective remedial measures can be taken.

Mr. Strauss: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the last part of my question. In view of the very serious degree of responsibility for these unfortunate happenings which rests on the Minister, I asked him what action he proposes to take, possibly in conjunction with others, to try to prevent a similar occurrence next week.

Mr. Marples: These matters are being discussed at union level today and it would be inappropriate for me to express any view now. The Opposition know this as well as anybody else. However, if the right hon. Gentleman or any hon. Members wishes to raise this during the course of today's debate, he is free to do so and my right hon. Friend will be able to reply.

Mr. J. Hynd: The Minister made great play with deploring unofficial strike action by trade unionists and the action of trade unionists in ignoring the instructions of the unions. May we take it that, in the case of the railway unions calling an official strike, they would have the support of the Minister?

Mr. Marples: We had better wait and see what happens.

Mr. Thorpe: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that since the arbitration machinery has been interfered with by the Minister there are some hon. Members who have a very great deal of sympathy with those who are on strike? Does he realise that until the independent arbitration machinery is restored to its full position this sort of thing will inevitably happen under this Government?

Mr. Marples: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong, because the arbitration

machinery has not been interfered with. The Government have suggested that it should be used.

Mr. Rankin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are many servants of the House whose services are indispensable to the running of this place? Is he aware that many of those in the catering department reached the House this morning only with extreme difficulty? Can he take any steps to ensure that they are able to return to their homes, perhaps late tonight, with his help or the help of somebody else?

Mr. Marples: I will certainly look into that, especially if this strike is renewed next week.

CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS (RESIGNATION)

Mr. Speaker: I have received a letter from the Chairman of Ways and Means, the terms of which I wish to communicate to the House. It reads as follows:

"My dear Mr. Speaker,

Acting on medical advice which I cannot disregard, I am forced to tender to the House through you my resignation of the office of Chairman of Ways and Means.

It is a great honour to have occupied one of the chief offices in the House of Commons, and I need not say how greatly I regret that I am unable to serve the House for the full term of this Paliament.

To you particularly, to right hon. and hon. Members, to the Clerks at the Table and to the officials of the House, I express my warm thanks for the consideration and kindness which have been show to me.

I have the honour to remain,

Yours very sincerely,

Gordon Touche."

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): The House will have heard with regret of the decision of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Touche) which you, Mr. Speaker, have communicated to the House. My right hon. Friend joined the Chairman's Panel in 1945. He became Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means in 1956 and Chairman in 1959. That means that ever since the war he has taken part in the work of the Chair, either in Committee or in the House.
I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House would wish to express gratitude for the work he has done over


the years in these responsible and demanding positions, which are of key importance to the House of Commons. I am sure that we all wish that with the lightening of his duties improved health will quickly follow.
The letter which you, Mr. Speaker, have just read will involve a Motion being put before the House. On precedents which I understand go back for a century or more this is done at once without advance notice. Accordingly, I wish later to move that the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Sir W. Anstruther-Gray) be Chairman of Ways and Means and the hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston) be Deputy-Chairman.
These two hon. Members have between them nearly sixty years' service in the House and I am certain that every hon. Member knows that they will fulfil their duties in an admirable way.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: I associate my right hon. and hon. Friends with the words of appreciation of the former Chairman of Ways and Means Which have been uttered by the Leader of the House and express our regret that illness has obliged him to give up his position.

Mr. Clement Davies: On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), may I associate my colleagues and myself with what has been said by the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. We all deeply regret the going of the Chairman of Ways and Means. We all equally regret the cause of it and we sincerely hope that his health will now benefit. We are all deeply grateful to him for the way in which he exercised his heavy responsibilities.
The responsibilities of Chairman of Ways and Means are very difficult to carry out, because he has not that cloak of authority which surrounds you, Mr. Speaker, in the Chair. We are very sorry that ill-health compels the right hon. Member to relinquish this office.

CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS AND DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): I beg to move,
That Sir William Anstruther-Gray be the Chairman of Ways and Means and that Sir Robert Grimston be the Deputy-Chairman.

Mr. Speaker: The Question is—

Dr. Horace King: On a point of order. Would it be possible, Sir, to get the feeling of the House on whether the Motion moved by the Leader of the House should be taken in two parts?

Mr. Speaker: The position is this. I do not think that I can deal with it being taken in two parts. On the other hand, in the circumstances I will accept a manuscript Amendment, which would enable the problem to be discussed, I think.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: Arising out of that point of order, would it not be possible for the Leader of the House to take note of this request and to move two Motions instead of one?

Mr. Macleod: The Motion I have moved is in accordance with precedents going back far a century or more, but you, Mr. Speaker, have said that if the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) puts forward a manuscript Amendment you would accept it. Naturally, we should not oppose that course.

Mr. Ronald Bell: On a point of order. May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that you have not yet completed putting the Question? You were interrupted by a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: I thought that the position was that I was unduly slow in observing the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) rise to a point of order, so I deemed myself not to have started putting the Question.

Dr. King: I beg to move, as a manuscript Amendment, That the name of Sir Robert Grimston be lmitted from the Motion.
It would be impossible for hon. Members, to whom this announcement by the Leader of the House has come as a complete surprise, to put forward an alternative name at a moment's notice—[An HON. MEMBER: "What about you?"] May I say to the interrupter—

Mr. Speaker: I think that the true form of this Amendment must be that what the hon. Member suggests is that all the words from "Means" to the end of the Question be left out.

Dr. King: I beg to move, to leave out from "Means" to the end of the Question.
May I say to the hon. Member who interrupted that this is by no means a party matter. This is a House of Commons matter. I express only my own feeling, but I think that it is shared by many hon. Members. We feel that the name suggested as the new Chairman of Ways and Means will commend itself wholeheartedly to the House, but the feeling of some of us in that in the office of Chairman or Deputy-Chairman the House ought to appoint somebody who has had experience of the Chair.
On the Government side, there are a number of hon. Members who have for quite a number of years now undertaken the office of Chairman of Committee and are members of the Chairman's Panel, and we think that it would be much more appropriate if the Leader of the House and the Government were to consider this matter further and then bring to the House at a later date the name of someone from the party opposite now serving on the Chairman's Panel, which would be acceptable to the whole House.
This is by no means any reflection on the hon. Gentleman the Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston), whose name (as been proposed by the Leader of the House, and for whom the whole House has an affection, but those of us who serve in the House as Temporary Chairmen feel that this is a matter quite out-with ordinary questions of party. I therefore suggest to the House that it should accept the Amendment proposed, and defer the question of the appointment of the Deputy-Chairman for further consideration.

Mr. Macleod: I wish to intervene on only two points. First, when this Motion, or a similar Motion, was discussed in 1943, Mr. Attlee, as he then was, in introducing it, said:
That does not alter the fact that these are Motions without notice, and have generally been made immediately on the relinquishment of the office.

In winding-up the debate, Mr. Eden, as he then was, said:
There has obviously been some quite genuine misunderstanding about precedents in this matter…I have looked them up carefully, and there is absolutely no precedent for notice being given, or consultation, beforehand…On every occasion in the last century a Motion has been put down by the Government and all the precedents I can find are that on the day when the Chairman of Ways and Means resigns or retires a new Chairman and Deputy-Chairman are appointed on that day.'—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th January, 1943; Vol. 386, cc. 259 and 263.]
That is on the point of notice, which, I think, may well have puzzled some hon. Members, because the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said that it came as a surprise to him. All I can say is that these Motions are always put forward in that way.
The other point concerns the hon. Member's suggestion that the hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston) had not had experience in the Chair. With respect, that is not correct. The hon. Member for Westbury—Sir Robert Grimston, in the terms of the Motion now before us—has been a Member of the House since 1931. He has been a member in two different offices of Governments, and, in particular, in response to the point just made, he was a member of the Chairman's Panel from June, 1955, to July, 1959—rather more than four years.
I think that that meets the point which the hon. Member put before the House, and that this is a name that, with confidence, we can put before the House for its acceptance.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I do not doubt for a moment the competence of the hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston), whom the Leader of the House and the Government have put forward for the office of Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means. Nor do I question for a moment his impartiality and objectivity if the House were to pass the Motion proposed by the Leader of the House, but some of us are not parties to the discussions that usually take place on these matters through the usual channels.
I am wondering whether the Leader of the House could give us any information at all about the rumours that have


been publicly bruited about concerning some kind of negotiations or understanding, or about some kind of breakdown in negotiations, that occurred with regard to other possible nominees. I do not propose to mention any names. I dare say that the newspapers have been read by more than one hon. Member of the House, and I should have thought that it was in fulfilment of our practice when these things are being discussed elsewhere that they should be mentioned here so that we could all know what has taken place and what the position now is.
It is not unknown in our traditions for at least one of the three officers who discharge the functions of the Chair to belong to an Opposition party. This has happened frequently in the past, and it would not have been an inappropriate thing to have happened on this occasion. I should like to know whether that aspect of the matter has been considered, and, if it was considered and rejected, why it was rejected. I do not think that it is in the least a reflection on the hon. Member for Westbury to say that there are other hon. Members on both sides of the House who could also discharge these duties competently, efficiently and fairly, and that if there has been some good reason why all these nominations should be the nominations of hon. Members of one party, the House should know what it is.

Mr. Macleod: Perhaps I may say that these matters were taken into consideration. There was some correspondence, as there would be, naturally, in a case like that, but it would be wholly inappropriate to go into details.

Mr. Thorpe: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will assist the House a little further on this matter? The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) has said that this is not a party matter. The fact that no Amendment of any sort has been moved to the first part of the Motion would seem to indicate the confidence and the respect which the house has for the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Sir W. Anstruther-Gray) as prospective Chairman of Ways and Means. It seems that this is something

that commands the support of the whole House.
The office of Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means is also an extremely important and difficult position. It is perfectly true that there are precedents for saying that no notice need be given to the House, but there is unequally long precedent for saying that, wherever possible, the Leader of the House, should meet the convenience of the House as a whole. Is there any precedent at all for the suggestion that it is impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to agree to a Division in regard to the voting on these two specific issues?
I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, also, why he is not prepared to have a vote taken on the first part of the Motion—the appointment of the Chairman of Ways and Means—and then, possibly after discussions have been held through the usual channels, and those channels that are not usually consulted, take a vote, perhaps today week? Could not the right hon. Gentleman try to meet the House on this matter? I am sure that those who would wish to support the manuscript Amendment are anxious to have as little controversy as possible about it, but I think that the House feels that it should have some sort of consultation.

Mr. Macleod: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he knows, of course, that it is a matter for the Chair how the Question shall be put, and the Chair has given some indication of willingness to accept a manuscript Amendment, which is what I understand is now being debated. In the form that you, I understand, Mr. Speaker, will eventually put the Question, it is for the House, and not for the Leader of the House, to decide what action it should take.

Mr. Thorpe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not for the right hon. Gentleman who has moved the Motion to say whether or not he is prepared to accept the manuscript Amendment?

Mr. Speaker: The Minister moved the Motion, and the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) has moved an Amendment. The House is at present discussing that Amendment.

Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 180, Noes 52.

Division No. 46.]
AYES
4.2 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Gammans, Lady
Oakshott, Sir Hendrie


Aitken, W. T.
Gibson-Watt, David
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Gilmour, Sir John
Page, John (Harrow, West)


Balniel, Lord
Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Barber, Anthony
Godber, J. B.
Partridge, E.


Barlow, Sir John
Goodhew, Victor
Pearson, Frank (Ciltheroe)


Batsford, Brian
Grant, Rt. Hon. William
Peel, John


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.
Peyton, John


Bell, Ronald
Green, Alan
Pike, Miss Mervyn


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Pilkington, Sir Richard


Berkeley, Humphry
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
Pitt, Miss Edith


Bevins, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Hare, Rt. Hon. John
Pott, Percivall


Bidgood, John C.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Prior, J. M. L.


Biffen, John
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Profumo, Rt. Hon. John


Biggs-Davison, John
Hay, John
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Bishop, F. P.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Pym, Francis


Bossom, Clive
Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward
Ramsden, James


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J.
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin


Boyle, Sir Edward
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Renton, David


Braine, Bernard
Hobson, John
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Holland, Philip
Ridsdale, Julian


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Hollingworth, John
Robertson, Sir D. (C'thn's &amp; S'th'ld)


Brooman-White, R.
Hopkins, Aran
Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)


Bryan, Paul
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Russell, Ronald


Buck, Antony
Hughes-Young, Michael
Scott-Hopkins, James


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Hulbert, Sir Norman
Sharples, Richard


Butler, Rt. Hn. R. A. (Saffron Walden)
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Skeet, T. H. H.


Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Iremonger, T. L.
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Cary, Sir Robert
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Channon, H. P. G.
Jennings, J. C.
Studholme, Sir Henry


Chataway, Christopher
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Tapsell, Peter


Chichester-Clark, R.
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)


Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Kershaw, Anthony
Temple, John M.


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Lagden, Godfrey
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Cleaver, Leonard
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Thomas, Peter (Conway)


Collard, Richard
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)


Cooper, A. E.
Lilley, F. J. P.
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter


Cordeaux, Lt-Col. J. K.
Linstead, Sir Hugh
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Cordle, John
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Corfield, F. V.
Longbottom, Charles
van Straubenzee, W. R-


Costain, A. P.
Longden, Gilbert
Vane, W. M. F.


Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Craddock, Sir Beresford
McLaren, Martin
Vickers, Miss Joan


Critchley, Julian
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Walker, Peter


Curran, Charles
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek


Dance, James
MacLeod, John (Rose &amp; Cromarty)
Wall, Patrick


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)
Watkinson, Rt. Hon, Harold


Deedes, W. F.
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Whitelaw, William


Doughty, Charles
Marlowe, Anthony
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Drayson, G. B.
Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Eden, John
Marshall, Douglas
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Elliott, R.W.(Nwcstle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Marten, Neil
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Mathew, Robert (Honiton)
Wise, A. R.


Farey-Jones, F. W.
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Wolrige-Cordon, Patrick


Farr, John
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Finlay, Graeme
Mills, Stratton
Woodhouse, CM.


Fisher, Nigel
Montgomery, Fergus
Woollam, John


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Morrison, John



Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)
Nabarro, Gerald
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Mr. Edward Wakefield and


Freeth, Denzil
Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard
Mr. J. E. B. Hill.


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.






NOES


Blackburn, F.
Fletcher, Eric
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)


Blyton, William
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Lipton, Marcus


Bowen, Roderic (Cardigan)
Greenwood, Anthony
MacColl, James


Boyden, James
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
McLeavy, Frank


Brockway, A. Fenner
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)
MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Hannan, William
Manuel, A. C.


Callaghan, James
Hill, J. (Midlothian)
Mapp, Charles


Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Hilton, A. V.
Mayhew, Christopher


Cliffe, Michael
Holman, Percy
Monslow, Walter


Dodos, Norman
Kelley, Richard
Moyle, Arthur


Donnelly, Desmond
King, Dr. Horace
Pargiter, G. A.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lawson, George
Parker, John




Parkin, B. T.
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Pavitt, Laurence
Spriggs, Leslie
Whitlock, William


Plummer, Sir Leslie
Steele, Thomas
Wilkins, W. A.


Rankin, John
Swingler, Stephen
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Robertson, John (Paisley)
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)



Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Holt.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That Sir William Anstruther-Gray be the Chairman of Ways and Means and that Sir Robert Grimston be the Deputy-Chairman.

IMPERIAL CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES AND COURTAULDS (PROPOSED MERGER)

Mrs. Castle: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are we really expected to proceed now to discuss the subject of industrial relations today without having had from the Government their promised statement on their attitude towards take-over bids in general and the I.C.I.Courtaulds merger in particular, which have a direct bearing on this subject?

Mr. Speaker: I appreciate the difficulties of some hon. Members, who seem to be unable to appreciate what is and what is not a point of order. I hope that we can put a stop to the practice of rising to points of order which are not such.

Mrs. Castle: Further to that point of order—

Mr. Speaker: It was not a point of order.

Mrs. Castle: On another point of order. May we ask you, as the guardian of the rights of the House, how the House can be helped to be given the proper material on which to debate the subject on the Order Paper for today? With all respect, Mr. Speaker, I raised this matter at business time on Thursday and pointed out to the Leader of the House the difficulty which we would be in.

Mr. Speaker: The House makes me its servant to rule on points of order, but not to discuss other things.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Ordered,

Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Iain Macleod.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[5TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. JOHN ARBUTHNOT in the Chair]

CIVIL ESTIMATES, SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 1961–62

CLASS V

VOTE 5. NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE, ENGLAND AND WALES

Resolved,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £16,546,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1962, for the provision of national health services for England and Wales and other services connected therewith, including payments to Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, medical services for pensioners, &amp;c., disabled as a result of war, or of service in the Armed Forces after the 2nd day of September, 1939, certain training arrangements including certain grants in aid, the purchase of appliances, equipment, stores, &amp;c., necessary for the services, and certain expenses in connection with civil defence.

VOTE 10. NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE, SCOTLAND

Resolved,
That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £2.122,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1962, for the provision of national health services for Scotland and other services connected therewith, including medical services for pensioners, &amp;c., disabled as a result of war, or of service in the Armed Forces after the 2nd day of September 1939, certain training arrangements, the purchase of appliances, equipment, stores, &amp;c,. necessary for the services, certain expenses in connection with civil defence, and sundry other services.

Resolutions to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow; Committee to sit again Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Ray Gunter: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the damage done to industrial relations consequent upon the interference by Her Majesty's Government with the established forms of negotiation and the freedom of arbitration courts to arrive at unfettered decisions.
I am sure that the House will have a sense of the importance of this debate, in view of the events that have taken place in London today and the shadow that is now over the railway industry. I thought that we had all accepted the seriousness of the situation facing us in the immediate future. I had the feeling that we were conscious that the nation was faced with very grave decisions—arising from the Common Market and, in particular, the grave issues of how we are to work and spend in the future.
Having talked to businessmen, industrialists and trade union leaders throughout the country, I thought that all hon. Members were concerned about the nation's future. There is a feeling that there is indifference in high places. People in very unexpected quarters are anxious about the handling of the present-day problems by the Government. Britain has faced many crises in its long and historic past, and has learned that melodrama is futile, but the nation has understood that in moments of crisis and gravity one thing is imperative, and that is truth—that the nation might be told the truth and understand the problems.
I believe that the Prime Minister is rendering a grave disservice to the nation by his attitude towards our problems. The right hon. Gentleman lolls and drools at his fireside chats and tells people, "We have not done badly. We have done jolly well—but we must do a little better." I submit that that is not the language the leader of the nation should be using today. It is an entirely wrong way to lead the British people, of all people, just now. It is almost like the classical phraseology that would be used when addressing a girls' junior hockey side. It is language different from that that we require.
There is not one hon. Member who does not appreciate that Britain has


little margins. We have no fat on which to live. We are faced with the realities of a competitive world and it is essential that every aspect of our productive effort should be looked at most closely at present.
I submit to the House that the most important aspect of all our efforts now is that which relates to the relationship and the spirit in industry. Unless the present bitterness and frustration can be removed the Government's planning and advisory councils will avail them nothing in the end, for there is one essential to the future well-being and progress of the nation; and that is that men should understand the problems and then be called, in a spirit of unity within industry, to Solve them.
I would submit for consideration a very wise statement made not by a trade union leader or politician, but by one of our leading industrialists, who said, just before Christmas:
In the final analysis, the prestige, the efficiency, the progress of any business depends not on the magnificence of its plant, not on the splendour of its offices, but on the spirit of the human beings who are working together in that business and whose lives are bound up with its success.
The nation is made up of all those businesses, and those words are relevant to the present situation in a national context.
Efficiency, progress, the solution of our problems and the adaptation of industry to modern techniques—all these depend in the last resort upon the spirit of the human beings who work in industry. In their panic and their cowardice, the Government have mutilated the very thing upon which our future depends. They have affronted men on both sides of industry who have sought to teach that industrial relations are, in effect, human relations. Good human relations in industry are not pie in the sky. They are a matter of good business, the good working of industry. They are the very thing that matters. Without good human relations, how can anyone persuade men to join in all the efforts, work study and so forth, necessary for greater efficiency? Without them, a barrier is created between management and men.
Let us never forget that industrial relations are not something which can be legislated for. They are human relations, matters of the spirit. What is it

that some of us have been struggling to achieve? First, that men in industry should have confidence, confidence not only in their trade union leaders but confidence in management, that they should understand that management is identified with them in the purposes of the industries in which they work. This means creating such an atmosphere that men have a sense of involvement, a sense of belonging to the industry in which they work. When a man's dignity is respected, when he feels himself belonging, all difficulties about new techniques, about redundancy, and so on, can be seen in their proper perspective.
It means, also, that companies stand on principle and they expect the men to stand on principle, too. The pledged word is given and those employed know that that word will be honoured. It means, also, that one strives—goodness knows, the task is difficult enough—to eliminate the tragic concept of two sides in industry.
In the present situation, which we all, except the Prime Minister, know presents us with grave economic problems in a world where we must become more competitive, the greatest prize of all would be a new surge of spirit and a new understanding arising within industry. How rich a prize it would be for our country if the unions, the employers and the Government were sitting down together not to argue too much about wages, but really to find out how to solve our common problems. It is here that the futility of the Government is clearly seen. They are incapable of grasping the true priorities.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury—I heard him described as "'Arry the 'Ammer" the other day—boasts that the pay pause has worked, that the Government have achieved their object. Has it? There are some who have escaped the net. Some have suffered. Some will suffe2. Do the Government really think that they have achieved a victory because they can boast that in certain sectors they have been able to enforce restraint for six or seven months? If they have done it, so what? If the methods adopted for achieving that pause have blunted the essential instrument for recovery after the pause, to whom is the victory? Who has won,


and who lost? In the end, it is the nation which has lost.
Do the Government ever stop to think how our industries are to be geared to the European market if we are to go in? How are we to keep pace with modern techniques if there is to be bitterness, sourness and frustration? if the men whose aid we wish to call upon have been soured, how can we expect to achieve results?
There have been introduced into industry many different forms of joint consultation. They have achieved varying measures of success. There are industries where men and managers have sat down to talk about their work. Are we now to have angry men withdrawing from that machinery for consultation? Are we to see vital committees set up to ease the introduction of new machines and deal with problems of redundancy unmanned by representatives of the trade unions? That is the danger which the Government have put us in today. To whom is the victory?
The Government may beat the postmen. They may beat the railwaymen. I am sure that the Minister of Transport would be delighted. Let us suppose that he may, in the end, thrash the railway- men. What does he or the rest of the Government think that they will have done? They will have put us back twenty years, so that we have to start again the weary journey to build a new edifice within industry.
Why do men feel angry today and—I am not ashamed to admit it—why do I feel angry? It is not so much the money. Let no one run away with the idea that the battle is about 8s. or 10s. a week, though, goodness knows, that is important enough to the lower paid workers. The blunt fact is that we have been lied to; we have been cheated. Our contracts and our agreements have meant nothing in the end. How can men have confidence? How can they believe in the principles we have been talking about? How can we expect them to behave in a constitutional manner?
I reject the right of men to use the industrial weapon for political ends. I have always fought against it because I regard 'it as a denial of the principle

upon which our democratic institutions are built. Nevertheless, there is, at the same time, an imperative duty placed upon every Government of whatever colour never to create circumstances in which men become so angry, so humiliated and so frustrated that they attempt to use that weapon. I repeat that I reject the weapon, but I assert that the tragic responsibility lies upon the Government today for many of the actions now being taken, for men have been tempted into unconstitutional action. The Post Office workers and engineers, the railwaymen and the civil servants are now soured. They have seen their long-established machinery denied.
I say this to my friends in London Transport and to railwaymen everywhere—I think that I have a right to say it in the House—"You are wrong, very wrong. You are damaging your own case. You are now required to be obedient to standards of conduct higher than anything the Government deserve or understand. Nevertheless, you are wrong, and you are called to that standard of conduct in your own interests and in the interests of the country". I say to them, "You have no right to impose this hardship upon hundreds of thousands of innocent people until every hope of settlement has been extinguished, until the trade union leaders have exhausted every channel".
I go further and say to my friends in transport that they bring great joy to the Tory Central Office, which sees in their actions only an electoral advantage, and, finally, I say to them that, whatever the provocation, it is not by venting their justifiable anger upon the citizens of London that they will attain justice. What is required now is cool heads, calm leadership and a determination to bring the guilty men before the nation and let the nation understand what they have done to decent working men.
What is the end of the Government's desire? They desire restraint. We understand that. We are not fools. When we are told that we are spending more than we are earning, we understand it. We have had joy at times in holding inquests on who is responsible. The thing remains that we are in a mess and that for the sake of the nation we have to get out of it. We understand


the end. What we object to is the ineptitude, stupidity and malice of the Government in the manner and the means that they have used to achieve that end.
The Government have not had the courage to come forward openly and say, "Well, never mind what your machinery is, the crisis is so great that we are going to interfere with it." I might have respected that more. I would have fought against it, but I would certainly have respected it, if they had had the courage to stand on their feet and say, "We are going to interrupt it."
What have the Government done? They have used half-truths. They have advised the chairmen of nationalised boards. They have asked them to take cognisance of their opinions, knowing full well that the men to whom the advice was given were, in fact, instructed. They were told, in the case of the railways, "You will not get the money." The Government have dodged the issue.
I hope that the Minister of Labour will not. I pray not, find himself a very busy man in the not too distant future, May I ask him, "What are you going to say? What are you going to do?" He cannot tell us to go back to the machinery, because he will not let us use it. He cannot offer conciliation, because there is no hope of agreement. Let me say to the Minister that he has almost destroyed, or allowed to be destroyed, the conciliation machinery that was created after years of effort.
I think that it is proper at this time to submit to the House, as I do submit, in view of all the circumstances, which are being discussed today in another place, what has happened in the case of the railways. Here, I think, is the outstanding case of duplicity. On 31st December, 1959, the famous Mr. Guillebaud and his companions set up a date for comparability. They compared the standards of railwaymen with twelve outside industries, and they said that at 31st December, 1959, the railwaymen were out of line by 8 to 10 per cent. The Prime Minister, very nobly, informed the House later that he was prepared to underwrite the objectives of the Guillebaud Committee and to ensure that the railwaymen should have a fair and reasonable standard of wages.
The railwaymen can never be accused of being irresponsible, because they have waited for a very long time and have seen each one of the industries and services with which they had been compared at 31st December, 1959, receive a rise, and, in some cases, two rises. They never asked to go in the van, they never asked to lead the way, or blaze a trail, but after eighteen months they simply said that the time had come to restore the balance and give fair and reasonable conditions. More time has passed. I will let the House know the facts, so that the country can judge.
On 23rd November, we had a long meeting with the British Transport Commission. Let there be no fear in the minds of anyone that those concerned were Communists or Trotskyists; it was a reasonable, fair and gentlemanly meeting. The railway unions spent a long time in submitting their case, nearly three hours. Every aspect of the Commission's financial problems was argued and discussed. At the end of the meeting the deputy chairman of the Commission thanked the unions most profusely and said that he would give immediate consideration to their claim. He admired their patience and statesmanship, and thanked them very much for the way in which the case had been submitted. Then we waited again.
Two months later, on 23rd January, it was arranged that we should meet to negotiate and discuss and then "that little man", twenty-four hours before the meeting was to take place, wrote a letter to the unions. It was so timed that it arrived at the union headquarters after it was closed. There was no time for discussion. There was no time for the executive to be called. We were told then that advice had been given to Dr. Beeching, "No negotiations; advise them to send it to arbitration."
We had submitted our case over a period of three years and when we did meet it took exactly four minutes for the reply to be given—one sheet of foolscap, in which we were told that the Commission accepted the fact that there had been a change of circumstance. That was very true—very self-evident—a change of circumstance since our last award. The Commission agreed that there was a case, but the Government had said, "No negotiations". They


had advised the Commission to take it to arbitration.
Now I turn to consider an interesting aspect of the case. This is where the deceit comes in. The Minister of Labour will get up and say, "We only advise Dr. Beeching." What does that mean, in effect? That there had been a breach of the agreement. Our agreement had been very clearly laid down, "We do not go to arbitration until we are in dispute." We are not in dispute with the Commission because it has never answered our case. We do not know what it has got to say, so how can we be in dispute with it? We are being forced to go to arbitration.
An attempt has been made to force us to go to the next stage of the machinery when we have not even had a reply at the second stage. Therefore, I submit that we look upon arbitration, as directed by the Minister, with some suspicion. Let me put it this way. We pleaded with the Commission. If we went to arbitration, as the Minister had directed, what would it say? What would be its submission? It knew our case; we had submitted it. But we were not in dispute. If it was to submit something, why not put it on the table so that it could be discussed? We might then have had an agreement—I do not know. Even if we had not, we would only have ended up with arbitration. I therefore submit that the railwaymen have been very roughly handled.
I hope, as I have said before, that cool heads will prevail. I tell the Minister of Transport that I know of no railwayman, from the very top to the bottom, who can find it in his heart to say a good word about him. We are shocked and shaken. We have held our members to the machinery of negotiation. How can we answer the unofficial strikers? What can we say to them? They have said to us already in the last twenty-four hours, "What are you talking about? You cannot keep us on the path by negotiation. The machinery has been breached by the Minister. What right have you to talk to us about the machinery of negotiation?" That is the situation to which we have been reduced.
I want to make an appeal now, and I put it earnestly and carefully to the

Government. I want them to believe that the railwaymen do not want trouble. We know what it means. Even now, is it too late again to invite or advise Dr. Beeching to reopen negotiations with the railwaymen? Cannot the Minister this afternoon tell us that Dr. Beeching will be advised immediately to go back to the stage of negotiations where we left off? Even if we cannot agree, let us maintain the machinery, let us talk and discuss, for I warn the Government that the present path is the path to ruin. If our machinery is to be upset like this, if the established forms and channels which have taken so long to create are to be mutilated in this way. I submit that there is no hope of escaping from our industrial troubles. What is now happening to the machinery in one industry is being most carefully watched in others. We are disturbed. Postmen, civil servants, railwaymen and engineers—all are worried.
I end as I began. We desperately want peace. We want the nation to be strong and prosperous. We want it to be geared to a new world, and it cannot be done by cheating. It cannot be done by breaching contracts unilaterally. It can be done by leadership that understands priorities, that has regard far human dignity and for men who have given their pledged word in documents. The people can be led in truth to their duty in industry, but they cannot be kicked by deceivers who know not the truth.

4.42 p.m.

The Minister of Labour (Mr. John Hare): The hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter) has made a speech of great emotion, which I am sure he feels absolutely sincerely. In his speech he attacked the Government, which, of course, is part of his job. But he also made a personal attack upon my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. I am sorry he should have done so at this very delicate moment in discussions which could result in a most serious dispute on the railways.
I have said what I have just said because this is so unlike the hon. Gentleman. I feel that in the future he may regret some of the things that he has said today. I commend very much what he said about the responsibilities of both sides to try to


stick to agreements. But I think that any irresponsible word uttered at this time—and I think that some of his words were perhaps irresponsible—will make the task of preserving peace on the railways more difficult. If it were not for the fact that, in my opinion, some of the hon. Gentleman's statements were so wide of the mark, I would at this stage have preferred not to talk about the railways at all.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the speech made by the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), in which he made a vile personal attack on the Deputy Leader of the Opposition last Thursday?

Mr. Hare: I think that that is a little irrelevant.
In view of what the hon. Member for Southwark has said, I should like to examine some of his strictures on my right hon. Friend and the Government. The chief burden of his speech was that the Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport have breached the negotiating machinery of the railway industry. I should like to say something about this, because we must keep things in perspective. I would remind the hon. Gentleman of something which he himself knows perfectly well, namely, that arbitration is an integral part of the negotiating machinery in the railway industry. I cannot for the life of me see why the hon. Gentleman can maintain that the machinery has been disrupted by a suggestion that an integral part of that machinery should be used.

Mr. Gunter: I am sorry that the Minister does not grasp the facts—

Mr. Hare: I should like to finish what I am saying.
The hon. Gentleman made the point that arbitration only arises when negotiations fail. He said that it was improper to suggest arbitration until negotiation had failed. That is really the burden of his case. What he overlooks is that if the Commission were to have regard to the Government's views it had to have them before it met the unions. The Commission did decide to have regard to these views, and when it met the unions it proposed arbitration

instead of attempting to carry the matter further by negotiation. The hon. Gentleman would have done much better if he had asked me why the Government prefer the issue to be settled by arbitration.

Mr. Gunter: The Minister does not grasp the facts. He does not understand negotiations. Last Friday we were dismissed without even a reply to our case. If we had had a reply to our case, if there had been a detailed answer to our submissions and then, if the Transport Commission had said, "Are you prepared to take the advice of the Government?", that would have been another matter. But we never had an answer. We are not in dispute.

Mr. Hare: The Government prefer the issue to be settled by arbitration, for very sensible and fair reasons.

Mr. A. C. Manuel: The Government are destroying the machinery.

Mr. Hare: No, they are not. The Government have responsibilities in all this. The first consideration that the Government have to bear in mind is the alarming deficit on the railways, which exceeded more than £140 million in 1961. This has got to come out of the taxpayers' pockets. It represents no less than 7d. in the £ on Income Tax, or a huge drain on what other taxes bring in. This deficit may well be larger in the coming year. The Government have to come to the House to ask for these moneys.
The second consideration—with which hon. Members opposite do not agree—is that we have to take account of our own policy that increases in income must be brought into a realistic relationship with increases in the national output.
The third consideration—and here again, in fairness to my case, I should point out that the hon. Gentleman made nothing of this—is that the Government have recognised that in spite of the two things that I have said—the financial situation of the railways and the Government's own incomes policy—there are special factors which warrant some increase in railway wages. It might have been argued that as guardian of the national finances out of which any


increase has got to come, the Government should have advised a limit to the amount of increase. If we had done so, I think that the hon. Gentleman would have made a speech attacking us. But we did no such thing. We felt that the fairest thing was that all these complicated issues should be argued in front of a completely independent and impartial arbitration body.
I do not think that every hon. Member realises how the Railway Staff National Tribunal is established. Of course, the hon. Member for Southwark knows this because he is a leading member of one of the three great railway unions. The chairman is appointed by the two sides of the industry, not by the Government. When it sits, the unions nominate a representative and the Transport Commission nominates a representative. These, together with the independent chairman, constitute the tribunal. It is, therefore, completely independent of the Government, and I think that members of the tribunal would be entitled to resent any imputation that they were not.

Mr. Manuel: Will the Minister try to answer the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter)? We are not in dispute about the composition of the tribunal. What we are in dispute about is the fact that the Government propose to go to arbitration before a case is submitted to them. That is the case that the right hon. Gentleman has to try to answer, and not "hare "away on the composition of a tribunal about which we all know.

Mr. Hare: I have not tried to "hare" away, on anything. In a newspaper which I read on Sunday the hon. Member for Southwark took exception to the view expressed in the Government statement about the need for any increase to take effect not earlier than 1st April. I know that hon. Members opposite do not agree with this, but it seems to me a perfectly natural proviso in view of the Government's insistence on the necessity for a pause in increases in incomes, the size of the Commission's deficit, and the fact that any increase in railway wages will involve a further subsidy from public funds. The Government cannot place a further burden on the taxpayer in the current financial year.

Mr. Gunter: This is a very important point. Do I understand that the Government will pledge themselves to accept any award of the arbitration tribunal?

Mr. Hare: I think—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] Hon. Members make so much noise that it is almost impossible to answer, but I shall try to do so. The Government are not a party to the arbitration proceedings. The British Transport Commission and the unions have not yet agreed on arbitration. When the award is made the Commission and the unions will have to consider whether they accept it, as the results are not binding upon them. Therefore, this question is purely hypothetical.

Mr. George Brown: The Minister said—and I quote his exact words—that the Government preferred that the matter should go to arbitration—not that the Commission preferred, not that the unions preferred, but that the Government preferred. He also said that the Government have decided that no award can be given before 1st April Will he tell us in what sense this is free arbitration that he is offering?

Mr. Hare: It is free arbitration. I think that I have made the position on arbitration perfectly clear.
This Motion covers a much wider range of subjects than the hon. Member for Southwark found time to cover. In view of the importance of the subject, and of the importance that he places on industrial relations, I must be allowed to deal with the general state of industrial relations, because the hon. Gentleman said a number of very damaging things about them.

Mr. Gunter: If the Government will not say that they will accept arbitration but send the matter to the British Transport Commission and to the unions, will the right hon. Gentleman authorise the Commission to accept anything that the tribunal offers?

Mr. Hare: If the hon. Gentleman will tell me whether the unions will accept arbitration, we may have a useful conversation. However, I do not want to be deflected from my main theme.
I think that there is a tendency in this country to exaggerate the badness of


our industrial relations. The hon. Member for Southwark tried to do that in his speech. I do not think that that does any good to industrial relations or to the country, and I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman, of all people, should have succumbed to that temptation on this occasion. He accused the Government of having made a breach in the machinery which had been developed and improved over the years. From many of the things that he said, one would have imagined that the Government, the trade unions and employers were at daggers drawn. This just is not true, and the hon. Gentleman knows it.
What some people do not realise is that, although Members of Parliament make heated speeches in this Chamber on party political lines, trade union leaders, when conducting trade union business, do not play party politics. I should like to pay public tribute to the sympathetic understanding and genuine co-operation that the leaders of the trade union movement have given me during the eighteen months that I have been Minister of Labour.

Mr. Manuel: What has the Minister been doing?

Mr. Hare: I will tell the hon. Gentleman.
There is today an increasing readiness on the part of responsible men on both sides of industry to get together in order to concert measures for further improvements in industrial relations.
In response to the request of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel), I should like to mention some of the things which have been happening during these last months. There has been a growing realisation of the folly of unofficial strikes and the damage that they do. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman confirmed that in what he said. Employers and trade union leaders are combining more and more to uphold agreements freely entered into. The motor car industry is a good example of this. In the docks and in shipbuilding, employers and unions are showing a new preparedness to work out ways and means for providing greater security of employment on the one hand and improved efficiency on the other.
I am finding a similar preparedness to look at our existing apprenticeship arrangements to see whether the arrangements that we have inherited over the years needs adaptation to provide the skills which the 1960s and 1970s call for. Throughout industry people are recognising more and more the need for better communications and joint consultation. Employers and unions realise that, although agreement may be reached on major principles at the top, the same spirit must be got down to the floor of the factory. The need for better training and more careful selection of foremen by the employers, and more training of shop stewards by the unions, has been accepted by both sides.
The unions have recently agreed to discuss with employers any instance of restrictive practices that the latter bring to their attention.
I should also like to mention the solid support that I am being given by the employers and unions in the efforts that we are jointly making to reduce the increasing number of factory accidents.
Finally, last week we heard of the decision taken by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, by a large majority, to join the National Economic Development Council. This could be an historic decision. For the first time, a working partnership between the Government, employers and trade unions, designed to make the fullest use of the nation's resources, becomes a practical possibility. It could bring about a fundamental improvement in the working of our economy.
Hon. Members would be unwise to underrate the degree of understanding in the trade union movement of the many and great difficulties which face the country. Nor should they underrate the sense of responsibility of the great mass of trade union members by suggesting—and this was implied in the hon. Member's speech—that they are now going to throw out of the window all their traditions of common sense and loyalty to their industries and to the community. I wanted to say this to give the opposite side of the picture—

Mr. Dan Jones: Is the Minister expecting the House to believe that this responsibility which he says is


inherent within the trade union movement is a by-product of the pay pause?

Mr. Hare: I did not say anything of the sort. I am trying to make a balanced speech and have every right to show that the statement made by the hon. Member for Southwark was exaggerated. I say this because of the Opposition Motion. In view of all I have said, which I do not think anybody will dispute, how can it possibly be said that there is a grave deterioration in industrial relations?
It is, however, true that the unions have protested consistently at what has become known as the pay pause policy. Let us, however, be quite clear that, in doing so, they are not necessarily opposing an incomes policy. Indeed, in its letter of 24th January to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the General Council of the T.U.C. used these interesting words:
It is of course a condition of reasonable price stability that increases in incomes should keep in step with the growth of real output.
I quote that deliberately. The unions have attacked our policy, as hon. Members opposite have done, on the ground that we have singled out wages and salaries to bear the burden of the country's difficulties. That is where we and they disagree. In my opinion, they have underrated the difficulties which faced us in July and which could have led to disaster for us all if the Government had not taken action.
The steps taken by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor in July were essential to redress our balance of payments position and restore confidence in sterling. We also had to take urgent action to make our industry more competitive and to keep our costs from rising so that we could be in a position to increase our exports. It was not a situation in which we could rely merely on exhortation. I think that history will say that we were right. Indeed, I wonder whether millions of working men and women do not already in their hearts believe that we are right.
We did not single out wages and salaries. We asked for a pause in increases in incomes of all kinds, and this was achieved. Although the hon. Member for Southwark mocked what the

Chief Secretary had to say last week, my right hon. Friend gave the following figures. The index of weekly wage rates stood at 120·1 in July, 1960; 122·2 in December, 1960; 125·1 in July, 1961; and 126·4 in December, 1961. During the pay pause, therefore, the index has risen at little more than half the rate of the corresponding period in 1960 and all but 0·4 points of this rise was due to pre-pause commitments.
Let me turn to companies to see the other side of the picture. Companies reporting in the second quarter of 1961 showed an average increase of 12 per cent. on their dividends and 6·9 per cent. on their profits, whereas those reporting in the fourth quarter of 1961 showed an average increase of 2 per cent. on their dividends and a fall of 3·3 per cent. on their profits. There can be no argument that the measures taken in July have strengthened our economic position. I do not think there can be any shadow of doubt that we are now much better placed for a successful export drive.
Throughout these months, the Chancellor has constantly pointed out that the pay pause policy was a temporary policy to meet an emergency situation. It was phase one of the Government's policy for incomes and production. As my right hon. and learned Friend has outlined, the second phase will be one of continued restraint. Again, I would emphasise that in this second phase it is essential that the restraint should not be limited to wages and salaries, but must apply to incomes of all kinds.
Phase three is our long-term policy to give enduring strength to the economy, to step up the rate of increase of production so that we can provide for greater increases in real incomes and steadily improve the standard of life of all our people.

Mr. G. Brown: Did I understand that what the Government have achieved against the aim stated by the Minister is that in the last quarter of 1961 profits had disappeared altogether—decreased by 3 per cent.—and dividends nevertheless had gone up by 2 per cent.? Is that what the Minister is saying?

Mr. Hare: If the right hon. Gentleman reads my speech, he will see that my meaning was clear.

Mr. G. Brown: Tell us what it was.

Mr. Hare: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I continue. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor recently expressed the hope that it would be possible to end phase one of the Government's incomes policy by the end of the present financial year. He has now authorised me to say that the Government intend that this phase shall be brought to an end on 31st March. This means that the undertakings given by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Civil Service and industrial unions on 16th and 18th January will now operate right from the beginning of April. Perhaps I can repeat what these are.
The Government will give effect to any salary increases agreed and to any wage adustments negotiated since July, 1961, which have been kept for implementation from a date to be decided by the Government. At the next review of the "M" rate for workers in Government employment, the workers concerned will be offered what the review indicates at that time. The Government will also put into effect those parts of awards of the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal and the Industrial Court which have been held in abeyance. The effective date of increases will again be within the scope of negotiations in the Civil Service, subject to the understanding that increases will not be dated earlier than the beginning of the second phase.
We shall thus return in the second phase—from the beginning of April—to the position on arbitration in the Civil Service which obtained before July, 1961, subject again to there being no operative date earlier than the beginning of this phase. In negotiation and at arbitration, as indicated by the Chief Secretary, the Government representatives will, as necessary, strongly argue the need in the national interest to keep increases in incomes in proper relationship to increases in national production. I sincerely hope that this will enable normal relations and working to be restored in the Civil Service.
With the end of this first phase, we must not throw away the advantages we have gained in keeping our costs down and improving our competitive position. I reiterate that if we return to a course

of increasing personal incomes without regard to national production, we shall again put up our costs and prices, weaken our currency at home and abroad and defeat the drive for exports on which we depend.
In order to achieve the objective which I have just described, it is essential that the average increase of wages and salaries should be kept within the long-term rate of national productivity. It is the Government's aim to secure an increase in the rate of growth of national productivity and this will be a main concern of the National Economic Development Council. For the moment, however, we must deal with things as they are. Over the past three or four years, national productivity has risen by about 2 to 2½ per cent. a year and it seems likely to increase at about this rate in 1962.
In referring to wages and salaries, I have in mind the general level of effective rates—that is to say, those rates on which earnings for a given time or a given piece of work are actually calculated. Changes in pay made under particular agreements—for example, those related to the cost of living—and reductions in hours or other improvements in effective pay should be included in the reckoning. In considering the scale of increases in wages and salaries rates, it is also necessary to pay regard to the practical likelihood, judged from past experience and knowledge of particular forms of employment, that basic rates will be supplemented by local or special arrangements.
It is for employers and employees to work out in the light of the conditions and agreements existing in particular industries and areas the application to individual cases of the considerations which I have mentioned, But it follows from what I have said that in the Government's view there is no scope in 1962 for more than strictly limited general increases in wages and salaries. In many cases there may indeed be no justification at present for any increases at all. In others there may be particular circumstances which point the other way.
Although I have spoken up to now primarily of wages and salaries the same principles should apply, in the Government's view, to any form of incomes.


Restraint in profits and dividends continues to be a necessary part of the incomes policy, and the Government reaffirm their request for co-operation in this respect made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor in his July statement. Meanwhile we shall certainly watch developments very closely.
I have made clear in earlier debates the value I attach to our negotiating machinery and to the agreed arrangements for arbitration as the way of settling wages and salaries in a free country. But we must recognise that, as a result of the working of this system, increases in wages and salaries have been outstripping increases in production. We all know that in fact—I am sorry to repeat this, but we must go on saying it—we have been paying ourselves more than we have earned. We have been causing inflation. We all recognise that this is damaging to the national interest, and that this in the long run is against our own individual interests.
I do not believe that high wages and salaries are wholly due to trade union demands. Members of trade unions are no more selfish than the rest of us. I believe that they and their leaders are as sensible and as conscious of our national problems as any of us. They have a job to do in the interests of their members and they do it with remarkable skill.
Nor would I blame employers for all these troubles. They rightly wish to settle these matters by free negotiation and agreement with the representatives of their workpeople on a fair and just basis. They are concerned with maintaining the efficiency of their work-people. It is true—and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree with me here—that sometimes employers have put up wages to attract labour from others and this has caused bidding up of rates and damage to the normal processes of collective bargaining. But employers, too, are conscIous of their obligations to the wider national needs.
The Government cannot direct employers and trade unions as to how they should settle these difficult and complex problems, nor can they give directions to arbitrators. In my view, it would be a grave mistake if they did so. But it is

essential that in future the national interest should be fully considered by all those, whoever they may be, who are responsible for the settlement of wages and salaries. The wider implications of particular decisions just cannot be ignored. These decisions affect not only the parties concerned, but the whole economy and our general prosperity. Selfish sectional interests which disregard the national interest will obviously seriously harm our future prospects. I do not believe that any sensible person would really argue about that.
I think that if the national interest has not been taken into account as fully as it should have been in the past this has been due to lack of knowledge rather than to lack of responsibility. I am sure that more must be done to make this knowledge readily and easily available to all concerned. The real need is to preserve our machinery of free negotiation and impartial arbitration and at the same time to ensure that the results do not run counter to the national interest.
I am sorry to have kept the House so long. There was a time when increased costs were passed on to the consumer, and profits, far from being reduced, increased at the same rate as wages. That time has passed.
In July the Chancellor acted with courage and determination. He has been subjected to a barrage of criticism ever since, but, as events have shown, how right he has been. [Interruption.] I will say why. Our costs were rising, our competitiveness was being undermined, our share of the world's exports continued to shrink. Of course, our whole economy and standard of living depends on exports. Unless we can control our costs we cannot be competitive. The overseas customer, as everybody here knows, will give us a living only if we give him value for money.
Thanks to the action we have taken, this year holds out great possibilities. The inflation is being ejected out of our system. The prospects for exports look better than for a long time. The Chancellor has set in motion policies which are aimed to secure far greater efficiency in the use of our resources. Some restraint all round is needed. Surely in these circumstances each one of us should ponder on this simple thought—so little to ask, so much to win.
It is because I believe it to be completely out of touch with the facts and needs of the times that I invite the House to reject the Opposition Motion.

5.16 p.m.

Mr. Richard Marsh: I think that particularly at the present time the House will have listened with a great deal of disgust to the speech made by the Minister of Labour. None of us on this side of the House, I think, felt that the right hon. Gentleman really believed in most of the things which he said. He comes here with his usual method—a few words of agreement with the speech made from the Opposition Front Bench, and then he tries to drown any controversy in an absolute deluge of platitudes and patronage. He tries to tell us that we are all standing shoulder to shoulder, and that somehow or another the rather unpleasant events which have happened have taken him rather by surprise and that in any case they are not the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour.
Like the Prime Minister, he tells us that we have got to face the fact that we cannot as a nation spend more than we earn. It would have been a great deal more to the point if he had addressed some of his remarks to some of the hon. and right hon. Members behind him on the back benches who have a rather bigger share of the nation's earnings than some of the people against whom the Government find it necessary to take action at the present time.
The big problem in the railway dispute, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter) said, is this. The Minister talked of arbitration, and yet he missed one simple question which was put to him and it is one to which we are entitled to have an answer now. I put this question again to the Minister now—because the debate is largely for his benefit—and I hope that he will answer it. In the railway dispute, will the Minister tell us now, yes or no, if the unions go to free arbitration, do the Government regard themselves bound by the result of that arbitration? It is a perfectly simple question.
The Minister turns down the right of the trade unions in the railway industry to negotiate on equal terms with the British Transport Commission. He refuses them the right to negotiate with

their employers. If it is suggested that they should go to arbitration one is entitled to ask him, if those men go to arbitration is the result of that arbitration binding upon the Government? If the result of that arbitration is not binding upon the Government, can the Minister give one simple reason why the employees should go to arbitration?

Mr. Denis Howell: Let us have an answer.

Mr. Hare: I have already made it perfectly clear. I have said that it is a hypothetical question. Neither side has yet agreed to arbitration. Neither side has said whether it finds the results binding or not. Therefore it is hypothetical.

Mr. Marsh: It is the Minister who has changed the established procedure of negotiation. The employees are quite prepared to negotiate in the normal fashion, but the Minister comes along and tells the new leader of the British Transport Commission that, despite his £24,000 a year, he must not have anything to do with negotiating salaries on behalf of his own employees. At that meeting the employees asked the Minister whether the result of going to arbitration would be binding upon the Minister and the question has not yet been answered. With the greatest respect to the right hon. Gentleman, it is sheer hypocrisy to say that he has answered the question. It is a simple issue and he knows that obviously no trade union can go to arbitration unless it knows that the Minister is prepared to accept the result.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: My hon. Friend is a trade union official and I am not. Would he explain to me what there would be to negotiate about? What would the issue be until negotiations had been pursued and one knew what matters divided the two sides? If they agree, there is nothing to arbitrate about.

Mr. Marsh: I am coming to that point. The Minister is asking them to go to arbitration. It is not their idea. If they agree to go to arbitration, the second question is whether the Government intend to present a case. If so, what is the case? At the moment they have turned down the men's claim and


no one knows what the Government want in its place.
The simple fact is that this is not an issue concerning the railway industry. This is not a dispute in the railway industry at all. This is the result of Government policy in every part of our industrial life. In the National Health Service in August the nurses submitted a salary claim to the Minister of Health and since August they have met the management side every month. In January they received the Minister's reply that he was considering his answer to them. I am not talking about dock workers, steel workers or coal miners. The nurses' representatives have now written to the Minister of Health informing him that they can no longer be responsible for the actions of their members.
A claim was submitted by the staff side of the Professional and Technical "A" Council of the Health Service Whitley Council. A meeting was called by the management side to discuss the claim. The staff side were kept outside the room for an hour and then they were called in and told by the management side that they had received a message, it is alleged, from the Cabinet Room, that they were not allowed to discuss the claim with the staff side. The meeting was abortive. It was pretty gutless of the management side of that Whitley Council that they did not walk out, but they did not, though I understand that they have made their objections.
Then there are the telephonists in Service Departments. On 1st February, 1961, the Treasury agreed to a substantial increase in pay as the result of a claim submitted in September, 1960. In February, 1961, the Treasury agreed to consider that claim, but by September, 1961, no money had been paid and no agreement had been formalised. The staff started to work to rule and by January, 1962, the staff have still received nothing.
I should like to put a question to the Minister in simple terms, and here I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark on some of these issues. If the Government refuse organised labour the right to free negotiation, what can they do except take

strike action? Are they supposed to surrender the things for which they have fought for sixty years? Are they supposed now to accept a situation where they walk into a negotiating room and have to take whatever is given them, without the right to argue or to discuss, or to have independent arbitration?
All of us on both sides of the House accept that a major industrial dispute today is a tragedy for everybody in the country. It is a tragedy for the men directly involved in the dispute. Some of us from time to time have taken responsibility for bringing men out in an industrial dispute and we have never felt happy about it. Contrary to what some of the more dramatic sections of the Press say, people do not enjoy participating in industrial action, and the people who are involved in taking the decisions do not enjoy taking them. But if a trade union leader has a contractual obligation to work on behalf of his members, and if the proper channels are denied to him, what alternative has he but to take direct action or let the men down in every possible way?
The present situation is the result of a long process. This trouble has not just happened in the railway industry. It has not just happened in the telephone service, or in the National Health Service, or among civil servants or teachers but in every section of our industrial life. This is what is so intriguing at the present moment. It is not that we are faced with a dispute in the railway industry or a dispute in the Civil Service or among teachers or among other sections of the industrial community. What is intriguing is that at the same time in every facet of our national life, as a direct result of Government policies, we find ourselves in the same position in every section of industry, whether engineering, the nationalised industries, among white collar workers, or workers at the factory bench. They are all being challenged directly by the Government, and one is entitled to ask whether this is important and serious.
The Minister of Labour made some remarks about the way in which strikes are exaggerated and about the effect of that exaggeration. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree with that. The Minister knows that more damage is done to the economy of the


country and to overseas trade by irresponsible talk of strike action by some of his hon. Friends—

Mr. Hare: Oh.

Mr. Marsh: The Minister says "Oh" like an insulted virgin. He knows per, featly well that strike action in this country in any one year has never had the effect of a whole host of other things with which industry has to cope as a matter of course. Strike figures here do not compete with the amount of time lost through industrial accidents or through influenza. Their effect is not even as big as the time lost through the vagaries of the calendar.

Mr. Michael Foot: The Government intend to put that right.

Mr. Marsh: They will have difficulty in putting that right.
The Government know that what has caused the problem in each of these cases is not strikes but the deliberate attempt of some hon. Members opposite to frighten old ladies in Bournemouth with the spectre of a massive industrial revolution. Only the Minister's hon. Friends could turn the General Council of the T.U.C. into raving revolutionaries, and this has been done deliberately to conjure up this spectre and bogy on which the Government can lay the blame for a situation for which they have been responsible.
Strike action is not the main problem. The overwhelming majority of industrial agreements are reached in a peculiar British way by free negotiations. We seldom have strikes, and the number of strikes has gone down in each of the last three years. The overwhelming majority of claims have been agreed round the conference table by negotiation between the two sides.
I have sat on both sides of the negotiating table. I have represented men and, as happens nowadays, I have also sat on the management side. From time to time management side has to say "No". This is not surprising. It does not cause an immediate downing of tools. It is accepted that when one goes into free negotiations one probably comes out with something different from the original claim. This is the reality of the situation. Acceptance of negotiation

implies a willingness to hear the other person's point of view.
But the whole purpose of Government action, carefully and systematically over a long period, has been to destroy the negotiation method in every industry in which they have any say. How does this arise? Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends have suggested that it is through Government incompetence. We accept that they are pretty incompetent. I do not think that even in his wildest moments the Minister of Labour visualises a Britain studded with statues to his memory in a hundred years' time. He does his job as well as he can, but he is not revolutionising industrial relations. It does not really rest on the right hon. Gentleman himself. He has some very good advisers who have been at the Ministry for a very long time. They are not responsible for what happens, but they tell him in clear words what is likely to happen when he pursues a certain policy.
I submit that Government incompetence is not the reason for the situation in which the country now finds itself with industrial action in the railways, transport, post office, Civil Service and every possible field. Even Sir Ronald Gould, of the National Union of Teachers, is becoming militant. Everywhere one looks, there is industrial unrest. It is not the result of Government incompetence. Indeed, it is about the only thing which has happened in modern times which is not the result of Government incompetence.
The only explanation is that it is the result of deliberate Government policy. If we say that it did not just happen, like Topsy, that after all this time of comparative peace the Government find themselves in dispute with every section of organised labour, the only answer is that it is the direct result of Government policy, a policy designed to produce a head-on clash with organised labour. The Minister appears to be shaking his head. If that is not true, he ought to get someone else to do his job, because he is making a sorrowful hash—

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: Has it not occurred to the hon. Member that there might be another solution? If the sum total of all the claims made is in


excess of the national income, is it not reasonable to try to make some reduction in the total?

Mr. Marsh: Yes: the hon. Member makes an interesting point, but one of the things that one has to do before one establishes whether or not the result of an agreement in industry is more than one can afford is to reach the agreement. When one knows how much is involved, then one can settle with the unions and is in a position to say whether it is too much or not.
But the Government did not know for how much the railway unions or the National Health Service unions would settle. They do not want to know. They are not interested in negotiation. They are interested in where this unhappy road is leading us. Why do they want to go there? I genuinely believe that the Government have deliberately embarked on this process purely and simply for electoral benefit. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] Oh, yes.
I am interested to find hon. Gentlemen opposite suddenly so virtuous. Think of the General Election. In 1959 the Prime Minister told the nation that the British £ was better than ever before, but at that time he knew that Government policy was leading us into economic difficulties. Still, it won him the General Election. Hon. Members opposite would not have been here if the Prime Minister had not misled the electorate; and the right hon. Gentleman is getting ready for the next one.
It is too much to think that these unusual policies pursued by the Government, with direct Cabinet responsibility, on every issue are coincidences unless one is prepared to accept either that the Government are incompetent beyond our wildest fears or that this is all the deliberate result of Government policy.

Captain Walter Elliot: What electoral benefit does the hon. Gentleman think the Government will get?

Mr. Marsh: I am sure that the hon. and gallant Gentleman does not really mean that question. Let us not hide this matter under a bushel. Everybody knows, except apparently the hon. and gallant Gentleman, that, traditionally, industrial action has been unpopular

for the Labour Party. This is not a new truth which I have just invented. It is known to a great many people. Nowadays they call themselves sephologists. It is known that if there is mass industrial action, it reflects upon the Labour Party. This is a price which the Labour Party pays for its close ties with the trade union movement.
If what I say is not true and these things are not the result of direct Government policy, it will be fascinating to hear how right hon. Gentlemen opposite can explain them. It is not just a question of wages and salaries. The country is moving now into the most serious industrial unrest that it has faced for very many years.
To return to the main problem, I think that it has been deliberately engendered and that the unions have been deliberately provoked. The intervention by the Minister of Transport in the railway negotiations was calmly taken as a result of a Government decision. It was not something that he did off the cuff. It was not off the cuff that, having appointed the highest paid railwayman the country has ever had, he told Dr. Beeching that he was the only employer in the country not allowed to negotiate with his employees. It was the result of a decision taken at high level, and taken for a deliberate purpose. I should not be surprised if in the not too distant future we do not have the Prime Minister on the radio telling us, with a voice quivering with emotion, how the nation is imperilled by the wicked trade unions and that people of the country must stand shoulder to shoulder. Some sections of the national Press have started to prepare the ground.
If that is so, it is a tragedy. I believe that we cannot have a planned economy unless we have a planned wages policy. Regrettably, there are some people in the trade union movement who talk fiercely about a planned economy but are horrified if one talks about planning in the trade union movement. Nevertheless, I believe that we must have a wages policy within the trade union movement and a rational trade union structure within the trade union movement.
I believe that in some instances even a Labour Government might find it necessary to call for a wages pause. That has been done in the past, and it might


well happen in the future. But I cannot conceive of any Labour Government deliberately giving away large sums of money, albeit to a small section of the community, first, and then pretending that they expect men to give up their rights of negotiation for much smaller sums.
I submit that we cannot expect organised labour today, rightly or wrongly the most powerful section in the country, to surrender rights of free negotiation. The argument is not about wages and whether an award is too big or too small. We have had that argument in every industry a hundred times, and we can get over that argument without difficulty. The argument at present, in very simple terms, is whether the Government accept the right of organised labour in 1962 to meet employers around the table, exchange points of view and come to mutually agreed decisions.

Mr. G. Wilson: How does one arrive at a sum total of the various claims which is not in excess of the income of the nation?

Mr. Marsh: It is difficult to follow the hon. Gentleman. There is no dispute between us and the Minister on this; we have been negotiating wage claims for a long time—

Mr. G. Wilson: The result has been the spending of more than the nation's income.

Mr. Marsh: That is another argument, and it is not true. If it is not true, one would have thought that the Government would have had a fleeting interest in some other aspects of the economy, such as takeover bids, over which they have no control at all and in which they say they are not even interested. They are not interested in land prices, in take-over bids or in public ownership. They are interested purely in this one field, and they deprive the trade unions of the right to negotiate voluntarily round the table claiming the right to come along at some stage and impose—as has happened—a ban upon dates of application. When there was a ban on the dates of application of wage agreements, it did not cause the great upheaval which many people expected. There have been

many agreements made since the ban on the date of application was introduced, agreements reached voluntarily by both sides of industry, but the Minister was not satisfied with that. Since that worked, he has now put a ban on negotiations at any price, and that is the position we are in.
I hope that the Government will change their view, and that they will be prepared to re-examine the position and to allow people to discuss their claims freely and on equal terms. If they do not, this country will be plunged into industrial unrest which will do enormous damage to every section of the community, and the responsibility for it will lie four-square at the feet of the Government, whose policies have deliberately produced a situation for which they now try to disclaim responsibility.

5.42 p.m.

Mr. John Peyton: The hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) has, with a good deal of energy, prophesied gloom. One may judge the actions and policy of the Government, or the proposals of the Opposition, but to judge so sweepingly on the motives, as the hon. Member did, is always dangerous. On this occasion, I think that the hon. Gentleman demonstrated the folly of the practice, because, whatever else he might think of the Government, or what I might think of my right hon. and hon. Friends who sit on the Front Bench, I cannot possibly conceive that they could be so silly, as politicians, as to risk engendering industrial disputes, or, as human beings, be so cruel, stupid and wanton. A great deal has been said about the motives of the Government, and here I think that the hon. Gentleman was wrong and even absurd in his charges.
The hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter), who opened the debate—we on this side have a very great respect for him, and I do not want to embarrass him—spoilt a very good speech, with a great deal of which I could agree. When he referred to the motives of the Government I regretted the sweeping exaggerations which he allowed his natural eloquence to lead him into.

Mr. Gunter: I tried to make it clear that the end which the Government had in mind commanded my support. It is


the stupidity of their means that I deplore.

Mr. Peyton: I will not pursue the point.
When we in this country are in this desperately serious position, I do not think that anybody can say that planning will be the whole answer to our problem. We went through a period in which the great cry was that the gentlemen in Whitehall knew best. That led us to devaluation, and, in the end, the party opposite found itself in a very difficult position in 1950–51, from which it had to get out. Nor do I think that the most dogmatic Member on this side of the House would maintain that the various measures which have been tried by my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench, supported by the party behind them, have been overwhelmingly successful in avoiding these recurrent crises, which perpetually thwart our general aim of expansion.
In these circumstances, I find it very difficult to understand what the Opposition really want now. Hon. Members opposite mouth sentences about planning from time to time, but it does not seem to me that we are making any progress. On the Order Paper today we have a Motion, which has not been talked about very much, which seems to me to proclaim that the recognised and established machinery of negotiations and the arbitration procedures are to be in all circumstances sacrosanct.
I do not believe, for a start, that the Government can be completely neutral and detached and adopt a "come what may" attitude. This is particularly true in industries in which the Government themselves have a large and intimate measure of responsibility, and when those industries are themselves in what everybody must admit, for whatever reasons, a parlious financial state. Let us be perfectly clear about this, in case there is any misunderstanding.
I have a certain number of friends on the railways. I have taken a passing interest in railway matters, but my knowledge of railway affairs is minute compared with that of the hon. Member for Southwark. I concede that at once. Nevertheless, I ask the hon. Gentleman to believe that I myself, and, I am sure,

a great many of my hon. Friends do not disagree, would like to see the railway industry restored to a position in which the railwayman can be assured of a reasonable career and standard of life. Whatever other reason, I beg the hon. Gentleman to realise that I myself have the greatest possible sympathy with the claim which is now being put forward. Lest I be open, however, to the charge of crocodile tears, I must make it absolutely clear that I am not saying for a moment that the claim now put forward should be conceded.

Mr. Marsh: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Peyton: No. The hon. Gentleman spoke at great length, and I should be obliged if he will now allow me to get on with my speech.
I feel that the Government are right—and this cannot be challenged—in saying quite firmly that they cannot simply contract out and be disinterested in the outcome of the established negotiating machinery and arbitration. I do not think that it is right, either, for the party opposite, as it has done from time to time, to proclaim the cause of expansion without going a little further and giving some thought not only to markets and demands for the goods which may be produced, but also to the question of prices, which, after all, is basic in our present difficulty. We all admit that the danger we saw last July was that we were pricing ourselves out of world markets, and had we failed to check it the whole lot of us would have been involved in the economic disaster which would have followed.
My right hon. Friend has far more knowledge than I have, but I can only say that I do not find it possible to share the confidence which he began to express this afternoon, though I hope sincerely that he is right and that his confidence will be justified.

Mr. Leslie Spriggs: Would the hon. Member say that the Government should take the same interest in rents, interest and profits as they have done in wage negotiations?

Mr. Peyton: I do not want to get involved in a big argument about wages and profits, but it always seems slightly strange that whereas increases in wages


nowadays normally anticipate a rise of productivity, profits are realised and dividends are paid out of profits which have been made.

Mr. Spriggs: At the expense of wages.

Mr. Peyton: I hope that the hon. Member has a chance of intervening later, but I do not want to follow that red herring now.
Far too often, the party opposite is content to join in the strident cries of the various pressure groups who torment us in these times with their insistence that more should be taken out of the same pot into which less is to be put back. To a certain extent, they show themselves to be unmoved by the fact that we are now making a habit of the awful business of paying ourselves increasingly large rewards unmatched by any increase in production. From the Government Front Bench my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer again and again has repeated the figure of £1,500 million as the increase in salaries, wages and dividends which we paid ourselves in the last financial year, while the increase in our production, in the goods and services produced, was only £600 million.
Far too often the Government are content to repeat these things once or twice in the House of Commons without being prepared also to stump the country and explain in simple, intelligible terms what is happening. A great deal of the difficulty which has arisen over the pay pause has been the fact that its need has not begun to be understood. Somewhat naturally, attention has been concentrated much more on the unfairness and unreasonableness of the implementation. But all remedial actions of this kind are bound to be unpleasant. Attention has been concentrated on that rather than on seeking to understand the basic reason for the pay pause, which is simply that we have been taking out too much and anticipating the benefits which we have hoped future production might make possible. In common sense, that is folly.
We have all been told many times that the pay pause is only a temporary expedient, that it is not a policy. My right hon. and learned Friend has foreshadowed its demise at the end of March. What happens on 1st April I cannot be sure. We are to have a period

of continued restraint, but I do not know how that restraint is to be brought about, nor who is to have a change of heart and mind.
The Government have been castigated a good deal this afternoon, but I would like to applaud the courage and resolution of my right hon. and learned Friend. Nobody likes doing unpopular things. It always seems incredible to accuse politicians of malice when they do something which is unpopular, because it almost stands to reason that for once they are showing courage. We all want to be liked and we pay a great deal too much attention to it. We are far too concerned to repeat the old shibboleths of the past without trying to face the vexing and intractable problems of the present. We go on with these old gambits of party warfare, which may have been relevant to 1900, but which are absolutely out of date and beyond the reach of sense today.
The time has come to take an enormous risk which politicians seldom take in days other than war—that of treating the British people as though they were adult and capable of digesting unpleasant facts and of acting upon them. There is a ghastly insult in this tendency to wrap things up in a pretty, chocolate-box wrapping, hoping that somehow or other people with other things to do besides wondering what a political speech means will undo the package and look at what is inside.

Mr. Robert Edwards: The hon. Gentleman is referring to the Prime Minister?

Mr. Peyton: I am making my own speech. This is only a plea that we should use words capable of understanding.
I cannot see how it helps at all to say to the people, "You have done quite well; you have to do just a little better." Something far more than that is now needed. We cannot say that while, at the same time, expecting people to accept the pay pause, with all the odium that it involves and with all the admitted temporary injustices that it carries with it. They cannot be asked to accept these policies while, at the same time, they are being congratulated on doing rather well.
We are not doing well and we have not been doing well for a long time. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] This is not a party point. It goes right back to and before the war, excluding the period of the war itself. I echo with profound admiration and agreement the words used by Mr. Harold Wincott in an article in the Financial Times in the middle of the summer. He called for the occasional use of a little imagination in our approach to some of these difficult problems. He said that only in two world wars had Britain been true to herself in our lifetime. I find it impossible to qualify that remark in any way.
I hope that the Government will try to practise those things, not just mumble to themselves and dish out the briefs, but really try to illumine these immensely complicated problems with an appeal to the imagination of the British people. Disraeli once said that man is never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. In my experience, appeals to the imagination of the British people, appeals which might unite them beyond the silly little "wars" which divide us so cruelly and so wastefully for so much of the time, are lacking and very few and far between. It is far more important that they should be made and that they should reach their target than that any of us should survive here to enjoy a long and honourable political career.
Finally, the Government are right and have been right to insist that the process of anticipating increases in productivity must cease. As I have said, my right hon. and learned Friend has shown great courage and resolution in saying that. But I am sorry that some of the Government's explanations of this difficult matter should have been so coy. I think that it is quite wrong to thump the table about the "greed" of the unions. It is always the case that what we all recognise as being greed in other people is, in ourselves, the most enlightened, intelligent and restrained self-interest. We have all experienced that. It is quite wrong to blame the unions simply for playing the cards which fate and the Government have dealt them. We can all find, if we want to do so, examples of greed all over the place. Having said that, however, I must observe that the

hon. Member for Greenwich appears to assume that out of every wage negotiation there should come an increase. That cannot be the case if negotiation is real and if the whole process is not to become a mockery.
Let me put one plea to my right hon. and learned Friend. We on this side of the House have always proclaimed our belief in competition without practising it very assiduously. Members opposite have constantly professed their devotion to the Monopolies Commission in order to preserve competition. If we want competition, as I am sure we all must do, there is only one effective way by which to bring a wind of health to the economy. That is surely to lower tariffs and let British industry face the world instead of being hedged about with artificial protection, the reliability of which is not too good in the long term.
Consider the damage that has been done to the British economy by protection—the flabbiness that has been caused to us by the fact that it has removed from us the cruel necessity of living with the harsh facts of life. Realising that damage, the sooner we get back to facing facts and competing with other people on equal terms, the better. Most of us believe that, if the British people are shaken up, they can do a good job—and here I am referring to both sides in industry. Forced as the Government have been to adopt a temporary and unpopular expedient, they should nevertheless note not merely the criticism of the timing or of the reasons for such a policy but also the criticisms of methods which can only divide and further embitter an already difficult situation.
I have detained the House long enough, but I want to repeat two main points. The first is a plea to my right hon. and learned Friend and his colleagues that we should get back as quickly as possible to competition—free competition in a world where it is fully available, without protecting ourselves with cushions which are going to be worn out before long anyhow. Secondly, I ask the Government that, in explaining, as they must, the difficult problems which torture us today, they should have the courage to illumine those problems with imagination. An appeal to the


imagination of the British people will, in the long run, bring far greater rewards than the constantly reiterated, rather nasty messages that we address to appetite.

6.4 p.m.

Mr. W. E. Padley: At least I agree with the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) that, having listened to the Minister of Labour's speech, none of us will be clear as to what is to happen after 1st April. A great part of the Minister's speech was obviously made in cloud-cuckoo-land. In his attempt to rebut the main part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter), the right hon. Gentleman implied that my hon. Friend had suddenly become a wild man and that his denunciations of the Government's wanton interference with collective bargaining machinery and arbitration was not typical of trade union leaders in Britain.
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that nothing my hon. Friend said was more indignant than what had been said by Sir Ronald Gould and other leaders of the teachers a few months ago, nor by the leaders of the postal workers unions, the leaders of the civil service unions, and the leaders of all the railway unions. It is no use the right hon. Gentleman accusing responsible union leaders such as my hon. Friend—for my hon. Friend is that as well as being a member of the Shadow Cabinet—of irresponsibility and engaging in party claptrap.
The Minister's speech had one advantage. The latter part of it showed that the inquest today is not so much on collective bargaining and arbitration machinery as on the abject failure of the Government's economic policy. There have been many attempts by Governments in the post-war period to influence wages policy and the distribution of the national income, but it is only since July that the policy of diktat, of imposition, has been applied.
Whereas previous attempts at wage restraint, whether under Labour or Tory Governments, were seeking to hold things as they were, the policy announced last July sought to reduce the real value of the wages of the British workers by an average of about 5 per cent. That,

of course, offends the normal criteria on which all arbitrators give awards.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Will the hon. Member explain what he means by that? I ceased to follow his argument at that point. He was saying that the attempt to impose a wage pause at this point amounted to inflicting a cut of 5 per cent. Is he assuming the continuance of inflation?

Mr. Padley: The hon. Member will get detailed facts and figures in a few minutes time. At the moment, my point is that because that was the nature of the Government's policy, there had to be this wanton interference with normal collective bargaining and arbitration machinery. But, of course, it will not succeed in the long run because, contrary to the illusions of Ministers and Members opposite, there is industrial unrest, confidence has been undermined, and there is a grave risk of trouble in the months ahead.
The wage pause—so-called—has been monstrously unfair. It is unfair as between wage and salaried earners on the one hand, and sections of the community who live on rent, interest and profit on the other hand. It is cant and humbug for the Minister of Labour to praise the "courage and wisdom" of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and make an appeal for national unity and a sense of responsibility after the unprecedented dividend and capital gains spree of the General Election year and 1960.
In the last twelve months, first, there has been a £45 million a year additional poll tax raised in the shape of increases in the National Insurance contributions. This bore most harshly on the lower-paid workers, including members of my own union, the National Union of Railwaymen, the agricultural workers and others. In April, £83 million a year was provided for the Surtax payers, when the Chancellor wept over the problems of a man with £5,000 a year who tried to educate his children decently. In July, there was the 10 per cent. impost of Purchase Tax and indirect taxes; £210 million a year to be raised from families without regard to their capacity to pay! After all that, there was the wages pause.
There was direct Government intervention in three ways. First, by control


over the public services and the Civil Service; secondly, in regard to the nationalised industries; and thirdly, by interference with wages councils, which have not yet been mentioned and about which I wish to say something later. This afternoon we had no reply from the Minister on the question of the railwaymen's case except the answer about the finances of the railways. The plain fact is that, as a result of the Guillebaud Committee inquiry into what were regarded as comparable occupations, two years ago this month wage rates were laid down and the Prime Minister at that time said himself that financially the Government underwrote the basis of the Guillebaud settlement. Two years have gone by. The railwaymen have had more than a reduction of 5 per cent. in their real wages. If the attempt of the Minister to muddle up the normal negotiations on the railways delays a settlement until well past 1st April, the railwaymen still will have sustained, even after the settlement, a reduction in their real wages of more than 5 per cent. if the resulting wage increase is of the order of 2½ per cent. mentioned by the Government.
When this House was discussing the legislation to provide additional money for the National Coal Board, I well remember that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) and other hon. Members opposite belaboured the Minister of Power and asked for pledges that under no circumstances would the Government yield to the claim of the miners for more wages. The case was that it would be quite wrong for the price of British coal to be above the world price of coal. But, of course, the National Coal Board accounts have, in a way been "cooked" as much as the railway accounts have become astronomical. In the first ten years of nationalisation, on average, the price of British coal was roughly £1 a ton cheaper than the world price. The National Coal Board made a loss of £70 million on coal imported from abroad and sold in Britain.
If the doctrine of the hon. Member for Kidderminster and other hon. Members opposite had been adopted in the first ten years of nationalisation, there would have been an additional income of not

less than £1,600 million, which would have meant that the National Coal Board would have liquidated not only compensation but the lotal value of all investments in the industry today and there would be in existence a reserve fund of roughly £800 million. In other words, if the accounts of the British coal industry had been kept on the same basis as the accounts of I.C.I. or Unilever, the Coal Board today would be relieved of interest charges on £40 million a year and of the need for the Minister to bring new legislation to the House.
There is one other point. The £1,600 million of which I am speaking is real. The only difference is that, because of the method of keeping the books, this amount figures in the reserves of the great private companies. For example, the mines in my constituency in South Wales feed the great Margam plant with coking coal as they have done for years, at prices lower than world prices up to very recently. This means that the Steel Company of Wales was able to build up large profits and plough large sums back into the industry, and so, in fact, the accounts of the nationalised industries have been "cooked" in the sense that the same criteria was not applied to them as was applied to the great private industries which, in effect, received a subsidy from the coal industry up to three years ago. One sees the rapid increase in productivity in the mining industry, and one recognises how, since 1957, the earnings of miners have been virtually stagnant while other earnings have been rising.
There has been a loss of 150,000 men, which may be accounted for in part by the necessary contraction of the industry. But that 150,000 figure includes tens of thousands of young virile men in areas where there is still a shortage of miners, as is the case in the South Wales area with which I am connected. I hope, therefore, that the Government will not tie the hands of Lord Robens in the same way as they tied the hands of Dr. Beeching if Lord Robens wishes to make an improved offer during the next set of wage negotiations in the mining industry.
About 60 wages councils influence the wages and working conditions of about 3½ million people in Britain. My own union is perhaps more involved than any


other, though other unions, including the Transport and General Workers' Union and the General and Municipal workers, have a large interest in the matter. I would remind the House that wages councils were established to ensure a reasonable standard of life and leisure in industries and trades where, without statutory regulation, that would not have existed.

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: Sweated industries.

Mr. Padley: The old trade boards related to sweated industries. The wages councils—it was Ernest Bevin who piloted the Act through the House in 1943 during the time of the Coalition Government—were designed to provide a reasonable minimum remuneration. On every occasion when the Government have sought to interfere in the matter of wages, they have sent letters to wages councils asking that the relevant White Paper or speech of the Chancellor be taken into account when settlements are reached.
Lord Monckton, when Minister of Labour, referred decisions back to the councils in order to delay the signing of orders. On this occasion the Minister of Labour has sent letters to the councils. Then, when the councils—including the independent members—have weighed the evidence, taken note of the Chancellor's statement and reached decisions, he has intervened and fixed operation dates some months ahead. I think there have been sixteen cases since the so-called pay pause began. At present, laundries, aerated waters, boot and floor polish, jute, cotton waste reclamation, sacks and bags, toys, unlicensed residential hotels wages councils orders have been postponed until 2nd April.
The case of the laundries is possibly the most shocking of all. The adult male rate under the wages council is £7 7s. 10d. a week and the female rate is £5 7s. 6d. a week. When the wages council met last September it found that since the last wage increase the index of retail prices had risen by 4·5 per cent. That may interest the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South. Despite an adult male rate of £7 7s. 10d. and a female rate of £5 7s. 6d., the independent members—voting with the employers'

side—declined to recommend any increase in the adult male rate. Yet, even those independent members were so shocked at the adult female rate that they awarded a 5s. 4½d. a week increase. The Minister of Labour then said that there should be a four and a half months' delay. In that case, I tell the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South, laundry workers have already had a wage reduction in real terms of more than 5 per cent.
It is important that hon. Members should realise that most of these wages councils industries have adult male rates of £8 or less a week and female rates of not much more than £5 a week. It is said that in a sense these are fictitious rates and no one gets paid so little, but at the time when the Laundry Wages Council was dealing with the negotiations the Ministry's own figures showed that more than 20 per cent. of the male workers were getting less than £10 per week and nearly half the women were getting less than £6 a week. If we refer to the Ministry of Labour's annual report, we find that inspectors of the Ministry report that in many of these trades one firm out of six which is inspected is not carrying out these orders.
In some industries, alongside wages councils set up by Acts of Parliament, there is voluntary wages machinery. Virtually all the distributive trades are covered by wages councils, but, because of reasonable organisation among the workers and employers in the co-operatives, the multiples, and some, although not all, of the chain and departmental stores, voluntary agreements exist. Once the Minister intervenes in this fashion with the statutory machinery that inevitably has serious repercussions in the negotiations in the co-operatives and the multiples and where individual trade union agreements exist with large single firms. Inevitably interference with the statutory machinery affects negotiations through the voluntary machinery which probably covers 700,000 or 800,000 workers in the distributive trades.
If we consider the retail trades of Britain and wage rates fixed since the councils were first established and laid down rates in 1948, we find that from then until last autumn the Retail Food Wages Council rate rose from 98s. to


169s., an increase of 71s., but during the same period the price index rose by 64·3 per cent. The upshot is that in the thirteen years during which the retail wages councils have been operated it can be said that under the Retail Food Wages Council real wages have risen in the case of men by 8s. and of women 5s. 11d. a week. If we compare that movement with wage rates generally, we find that, so far from the relative position having improved, it has been sub-stantially worsened. That is even more true when one refers to earnings. It can be said that if following 1st April the Government continue to use wages council machinery as an instrument for imposing their wage policy, it is absolutely certain that by the time the next wage increase is negotiated in the retail wages councils real wages will be back to the 1948 levels. An analysis of the trend of the cost of living and the delay in achieving the increase will mean an attempt by the Government to reduce real wages by about 5 per cent.
Since he is the only senior Minister still in his place, I put to the Leader of the House that it is surely a most iniquitous policy to use wages council machinery affecting the livelihood of 3½ million of the most lowly paid workers as a principal instrument in the pay pause. Whatever may be the future wages policies, national income policies and policies in economic planning, I hope Ministers and all hon. Members will realise that we have a special responsibility to ensure that the lower paid workers, particularly those who over the years have needed statutory protection, should find their position improved.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, I recognise that any long-term economic planning for Britain involves changes in traditional attitudes towards wage bar- gaining. Those of us who have practical responsibilities in the trade union world and those of use who have participated in wage negotiations for many years have no love for the game of chasing our own tails, nor—to change the metaphor—forever being on the treadmill.
If there is to be a new approach, there are three essential decisions to be taken.

First, the Government must seek agreement—and agreement can be achieved only if there is confidence. The gravamen of our charge against the Government is that their persistent actions since last July have shattered confidence in the great machinery of collective bargaining and arbitration. Secondly, any new approach must be founded on social justice. As long as we have Governments which give £83 million to the Surtax payers and deny the laundry lassies 5s. 4½d. a week when they are earning only £5 7s. 6d., there is no moral basis for planning or for an appeal for national responsibility. There can be no such moral basis when crimes of that kind are permitted as a regular feature of Government policy. Thirdly, there must be dynamic expansion.
That brings me to where I began my speech. In the dock today there has been not the collective bargaining machinery or the traditional arbitration structures in Britain. What has been in the dock today has been the abject and total failure of the Government's economic policy. I hope, though with little confidence, that the Government have been converted from their belief in the free-for-all. I hope, again with little confidence, that the Government are prepared to go forward with intelligent economic planning, allied with social justice, and to seek agreement with the leaders of the great trade unions, together with the employers' federations and the nationalised industries, for if they will not do that, they should resign and make way for those who will.

6.33 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: When the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Padley) said in his speech that the institution of the pay pause by the Government meant imposing a 5 per cent. cut in the wages of the workers affected by it, I was puzzled to know what he meant. Later in his speech he explained what he meant by that strange phrase. He meant that a degree of inflation had occurred since certain workers, whom he mentioned, had received their last pay increase. He meant—and I have no reason to question it—that the erosion of wages which those people had suffered was about 5 per cent. I suppose—there would have been no point in his mentioning it had not this been the case


—that he argued that wage increases should not have been refused to the workers in those categories.

Mr. Padley: The point is that between March, 1960, when the previous increase was given under the Laundry Wage Councils Order, and September, 1960, when the last increase was negotiated, the interim price index rose from 110 points to 115 points, a rise of 4·5 per cent.

Mr. Bell: The hon. Member is merely confirming the impression which I gathered from the hon. Member's speech. Presumably his argument is that the wage increases should have been conceded during the period of the pay pause. I can well see, therefore, how it is that inflation has been endemic in this country for the sixteen or seventeen years since the end of the war.

Mr. Walter Monslow: rose—

Mr. Bell: I will not give way. I gave way to the hon. Member for Ogmore because I was dealing with a point which he had made, but I would rather continue my speech.
The reason that inflation has been endemic in the country for fifteen years or more is that, inflation having once occurred—and under the Labour Party we had a flying start for six years after the war—category after category of persons—I will use that neutral phrase; it does not matter whether they are salary earners or wage earners, for they are in receipt of personal incomes—began to stake claims to offset any reduction in the purchasing power of their remuneration which had already occurred and also to take account of any future reduction in purchasing power which they though might occur. It is this process of competitive claims, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has called leapfrogging, which has been the motor driving forward the inflation from which we have suffered.

Mr. Monslow: rose—

Mr. Bell: I will not give way to the hon. Member.
The reason for the Government's policy, at present under discussion—whether hon. Members opposite agree with it or dissent from it—is the con

viction of those who sit on this side of the House, and particularly of the Government, that in the national interest this process should be stopped now. I very much doubt whether any of the jagged edges of industrial relations which have been mentioned this afternoon are the result of interference with the negotiating machinery. I do not believe that they are.

Mr. Monslow: Nonsense.

Mr. Bell: I will explain why that is my belief.

Mr. Spriggs: Try working on the railways.

Mr. Bell: If it once be granted that the aim of the Government's policy is to conquer inflation, I should be inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) that it would perhaps have been wise for the Government to say explicitly last summer that the untrammelled existence during this operation of cost-of-living arrangements, wages council agreements and industrial arbitration procedures was not compatible with that aim. That is a very possible point of view, and probably the correct point of view, because if we have a large part of the population whose wages are governed by the cost of living, then we (ave a built-in machine of inflation, and it makes it all the more difficult, if we are operating only upon those who are not so circumstanced, to reverse that inflation.

Mr. Monslow: rose—

Mr. Bell: In a debate in which many hon. Members on both sides of the House want to speak, it is much fairer that hon. Members should make their speeches without interventions. I know that I intervened earlier in a speech, but it was purely for elucidation in order that I might take up the point later. But if the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Monslow) wants to intervene for elucidation, I will gladly give way to him.

Mr. Monslow: Is the hon. Member suggesting that the wages prevailing in the Post Office and on the railways under the wages councils are responsible for an inflationary situation? I suggest that the circumstances in which we find ourselves are due to the fact that there is a


deflationary situation because their wages always lag behind those of other people.

Mr. Bell: I was not wrong in assuming, as I did, that the hon. Member's desire to intervene was to make a debating point and in no way to seek elucidation of something which I had said. He wanted to make sure that he made that point in case, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, he was not fortunate enough to catch your eye.

Mr. Spriggs: Disgraceful. The hon. Member should withdraw that statement.

Mr. Bell: The intervention did not arise out of anything which I have said.
If it be granted that the policy is to conquer inflation, it inevitably follows that the fact that a large part of the population is subject to cost-of-living agreements and to the decisions of wages councils and industrial arbitration procedures very greatly diminishes the Government's scope in carrying through any policy designed to resist inflation. It would have been entirely appropriate if the Government had formally announced last summer that if the need arose they would set aside these procedures for the clearly defined and temporary purpose of stopping inflation. When we arrive at a permanent solution of our economic difficulties—we hope in agreement with the T.U.C.—a complete reshaping of all these procedures will be an inevitable part of it, as I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will probably agree.
The present state of industrial relations depends upon something quite different from and much wider than arbitration procedures or wages councils. Superficially, as many hon. Members opposite have already more or less suggested, labour relations are extraordinarily good and have been so for a long time. The hon. Member for Ogmore said that the number of strikes in this country has been steadily declining over the last few years. That may well be true. On the surface, labour relations are very good indeed. It is possible to argue that they are almost too good and that between the employing and employed sides of industry there is the sort of cosy relationship which only obtains in an inflationary economy.
I want to refer to something which the late Aneurin Bevan said. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Ogmore has left the Chamber, because this was said in a debate on the closing hours applicable to shops, in which the hon. Member for Ogmore had played a leading part. The late Aneurin Bevan said that there was a real risk that the producer was giving himself a black eye as consumer. For some time past there has been a remarkable cosiness in industrial relations between employer and employed at the expense of the consumer. Inflation proceeds cheerfully along, with higher wages and higher profits, but also higher prices to the consumer. Since the producer is himself a consumer, naturally he does not get very much net gain from the process. Certain categories of the population have experienced a particular disadvantage.
It has seemed to me that from time to time the process which I have just described has enjoyed something like acquiescence from various Governments. It is not difficult to understand why. It is a process and a state of affairs which is comfortable for everyone who takes part in it. For many years we have enjoyed full employment, rising standards of living, rising wages and rising profits. It would be surprising if, in these circumstances, there were not many who said, "This is a very nice way of life. Why should we alter it?"

Mr. Denis Howell: Hear, hear. That is what the Tories said at the General Election in 1959.

Mr. Bell: The answer to the question which that "Hear, hear" implied is that we must alter it; but not because of an urgent impending crisis. I have no doubt that the short-term measures will cure that, as they have cured it in the past. That is not the real problem. The nature of our problem is that we live in a relative world where we are bound to compare our performance with that of other people. It is because this country has been accustomed to occupying a pre-eminent position in the world that we are not willing to accept any dispensation, any arrangement of our affairs, which over a period of time seems likely to result in our losing that pre-eminent position.
That is why we are at the moment engaged in looking round—I trust all of


us are—for a dispensation which will be better. That is the operation that we are engaged in. I do not think one ought to overstate the case by concentrating attention upon the factors which are of a temporary character and which could be cured under what I will call the existing dispensation. But it is common ground each time we cure them in that way we set back the growth of the economy. We want to avoid that if we can.
The nature of our economy is so familiar to hon. Members on both sides that it would be wrong to take up any time in describing it. For the purpose of my argument I will do so in a short paragraph. Since the war there has never seemed to be any problem in expending our economy. The growth of the economy takes place easily enough if the restraining hand of government is removed. Our problem is that, whenever our economy expands, one-quarter of the expansion must be exported to pay for the raw materials which made it possible. Expansion takes place easily enough for two years. We then find that one-quarter of the extra production is not going abroad and that someone has to do something about it. It is the Government who have to do it. Our task today is to find a better way of overcoming this difficulty than either party has managed to employ in the past.
The underlying cause of any deterioration in industrial relations today is this. The reason why when our economy expands, as it seems to do effortlessly if left alone, one-quarter of the extra production does not go abroad is that our personal incomes always expand at the same time faster, than production and an undue proportion of the extra production is kept at home. I think that we all accept this diagnosis. It has been said often enough in the past few months.
If we want to cure this problem, we must first ask why it happens. It is true that, when the economy has expanded in this way, company profits, dividends and other forms of income which are often described as unearned have risen. In the recent past they have risen more slowly than earned personal incomes. [An HON. MEMBER: "They are going down."] I know that company profits are going down at the

moment. I was taking the last full year, because figures are often quoted for it.
A great deal of attention has been devoted—I think, unfortunately—to a figure which my right hon. and learned Friend quoted in his July statement. He said that dividends had risen by 20 per cent. in the previous year, whereas wages and salaries had risen by 8½ per cent. To seize upon that figure is to seize upon one single element in the unearned sector and take it in isolation. The most highly geared element is the dividends of ordinary shares in industrial companies.
My right hon. and learned Friend gave the right figure in his July statement. It was that wages had increased by 8½ per cent. while the other forms of income—rents, dividends, interest and income from self-employment—rose by 6½ per cent. One should not mount party campaigns on these rather narrow distinctions: I mention these figures merely in reply to those who have so often taken the single item out of the unearned element, namely, the increase of 20 per cent. in ordinary dividends. By doing so they have painted a very unfair picture.
If it is true that it is the excessive rise in personal incomes which causes inflation and which we have to cure, how are we to conduct the operation? In so far as company profits are an element in it, I would say that the existing credit squeeze always operates first upon them and is effective enough. When we come to wages and other forms of personal income, I am driven to this conclusion, which I offer to the House, although it may be controversial, in all sincerity. I find it inescapable that the basic reason is that there is a sort of militancy in the trade unions which has carried over from the last century into circumstances in the middle of this century in which there is no counterbalancing force on the other side.
We have unemployment since 1951, the period for which my party was responsible, running at about 1·6 per cent. for the country as a whole. That is a very fair figure for the period of the time with which we are concerned. In such a situation there will not be any militancy on the part of the employer. The great thing that he wants is to keep his factory running at all costs. Capital investment is a very heavy charge. The greatest


disaster to him is a stoppage. On the whole, if he gives way, he can put the extra cost on the price of the product and the very inflation which wage increases create in the home market make it more likely that he will be able to sell the product at a higher price. So this process is going on. There is no counterbalance in the circumstances of the 1950s and 1960s to the militancy of the trade unions. There could be two reasons for this militancy, but I am not sufficiently expert in the subject to know which is the greater.
I believe that one is sheer momentum. The trade unions had a terrific job to do in the nineteenth century and without militancy they could never have done it. The other is the fact that the Communist Party in Britain has been consistently defeated in its attempt to enter Parliament. Most of its candidates lose their deposits when they stand for election. That being so, the Communist Party has concentrated all its efforts on the industrial front. Occasionally, this fact reaches the headlines, when something like the E.T.U. case occurs, but, whether it reaches the headlines or not, it remains true that the Communist Party has concentrated all its energy, which is very great, on the industrial front and not on the political and democratic front.

Mr. Denis Howell: Teachers?

Mr. Bell: I have engaged in many polemic activities with the hon. Gentleman, sometimes with him, as he knows, and sometimes against him, and I always appreciate those exchanges. But at this moment I am trying to put over a serious argument.
This concentration of the Communist Party on the industrial front is the second main reason for the militancy of the trade unions. I certainly declare my belief that, whatever its reasons, that militancy exists. What is more it is not merely concentrated in the leadership. The history of the strikes in this country since the end of the war shows that more than 90 per cent. of them have been unofficial strikes, entered upon against the advice of the trade union leadership.
I believe that the leaders of most trade unions, and certainly those who attain eminence in the T.U.C., recognise the country's problems, and although

they may disagree with the Conservative Party on many things, they would like to go further in co-operation with us than they dare do. Their difficulty is that they are constantly being out-manœuvred from below. They are afraid that if they co-operate with us, or with the Government of the day, as I would prefer to say, so far as their own beliefs prompt them to, they would meet two disadvantages. First, they might not be able to deliver the goods, if I may use that expression, and secondly, they might be disowned or dethroned at the next union elections. I think that these are problems which they face and they may be extremely difficult because so much of the militancy is, in fact, on the shop floor and in the hands of the shop stewards' movement.
It is easier to diagnose these things, as I have done for my own benefit—I do not know whether I carry hon. Members with me or not—than to suggest a cure for them. I cannot see any way of finding a permanent solution of this problem—which faces Britain more than any other country because it has no raw materials and is subject to the 25 per cent. rule whereby if we increase our production by £100 million we have to increase our exports by £25 million to pay for our imports, this being the discipline to which we are constantly subjected—I cannot see any way in which we can solve it unless in some way or another that militancy is removed from the trade unions.

Mr. Gunter: Will the hon. Gentleman accept the assurance from me that the means that the Government have adopted over the last six months have been of the greatest inspiration to King Street, the headquarters of the Communist Party, than anything else that we have known? It may sound strange, but I am told that the toast in King Street is to "The Chancellor of the Exchequer. The best we have ever had."

Mr. Bell: I am less well informed on what goes on behind the closed doors at King Street than the hon. Gentleman obviously is. I do not take any part in that toasting. This might be true. This is the first time since the end of the war that a Government have at last decided to face up to this problem and it is idle to pretend that when the


Government of the United Kingdom decides to face up to this problem and cure it there will not be heart-searching and trouble.
This is due to the process, which I have described, of production going ahead, and then somehow the adjustment between exports and the home market having to be met. if this is faced up to, and if its root cause lies in the growth of personal incomes, and if we accept that however much we may take countervailing action in regard to company profits, dividends, and so on, nevertheless it is industrial wages which are more than the core of the problem; they are four-fifths of it. If we accept all these facts King Street is bound to rejoice in the temporary opportunity which is afforded for its destructive activities. Nevertheless, it is a prime national interest that this attempt should be made and persisted in.
I knew that I was going to say something controversial, but I am sure that what I have said is right and that it ought to be said. Nothing that I am saying is in any sense hostile to the trade unions, which have an essential function to perform. They have performed it in the past and much of their work has been based on the 1875 legislation, which my party put through, but that does not alter the fact that in the 1960s there is an imbalance in the constitution of this country with the trade unions, somehow or other, not being answerable to anyone for the tremendous power and influence which they exercise.
I cannot tonight offer a solution to this state of affairs. This is a tremendous problem, the greatest of our time, and it is difficult to know how we are to solve it without destroying something which is vital to a balanced democratic society. Somehow or other we have got to solve it. I should be sorry indeed if it had to be solved by restoring the balance through higher unemployment.
Surely there is an alternative, namely, some kind of wages policy whereby both sides of industry carry out a basic appraisal of the value of services and construct a framework within which arguments can occur and industrial arbitration, wages councils and things of that kind can function. It is easy to arbitrate between two litigants, but when it is a question of what is the right wage

to pay for people doing different jobs it is rather more difficult. It can only be based on comparability. There is no absolute yardstick. Until the general framework has been settled by some kind of basic agreement, I do not see how these processes to which the hon. Member for Southwark referred can be carried through successfully.
I hope that we shall always have the utmost vigour in party controversy in this House. I sometimes think that hon. Members are inclined to refer to each other in terms of undue respect and that we are not nearly sharp enough to each other. Perhaps when I resume my seat that state of affairs may alter. But here at least is a problem which, with all the sharpness of party controversy, we have got to solve between us quickly if we are to retain the pre-eminent position which we in this country have come to expect in the world and to which I am sure our abilities and character fully entitle us.

7.3 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Holt: In view of the wish which the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) expressed at the end of his speech, I would say that I thought that most of his speech was quite deplorable and utterly incomprehensible. I was, however, delighted to hear him say that we should have a wages policy.
First, may I say a word or two on what the Minister said at the beginning of the debate. He seemed seriously to pretend that the Government had not undermined established wage negotiating policy and established arbitration procedure. In defence of his actions over the railways, he said that the Government were concerned with two things—first, the £140 million deficit of the railways and, secondly, in accordance with the Government's economic policy, that increases in wages should be permitted only within the total increase of production. Because of those considerations he was not prepared to allow wage negotiations to be finalised between the unions and the railways, and so the matter had to go to arbitration.
The right hon. Gentleman cannot pretend that those two considerations had been previously taken into account by


arbitrators in industrial disputes. This is a new element, and surely this is the whole point of what the Chancellor has been saying for the past nine months, that in future if wages in the country as a whole are increased beyond the increase in the gross national product in a particular year there will be wage inflation.
The real criticism of this Government over the past twelve months and more is surely that they have thrown a spanner into the wheels of a hallowed negotiating machinery built up laboriously over many years to which many people in the trade unions and among the employers attach great importance. The point is that this machinery is now out of date. If the Government at the beginning had said this and had proposed something else to be put in its place, they would have found a great deal more support for even their temporary pay pause policy. But they have never done that, and it is to that fact that I should like to direct myself for a few moments.
The Minister said that the present policy consisted of three phases. First is the initial pause, which ends, we understand, on 31st March. Second is the continued restraint for another undefined period. Whether the Leader of the House in winding up the debate is prepared to give an indication of the length of this second interim period, I do not know. The third phase is a period when we have the right to assume that we are going to have a complete and rounded policy of wage negotiations in the future. Perhaps the Leader of the House will have something more to say about that.
The country at the moment is eagerly waiting to hear what the Government have got to say in a positive way. So far their whole attitude has been negative. People have been asked to forgo their natural desire to increase their incomes.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: Only the wage earners.

Mr. Holt: I am talking about wage and salary earners at the moment. They have been asked to forgo their natural instinct to increase their wages, but without any clear indication from the

Government about their policy. The Government must answer this question: are they seriously leading the country to adopting a wages policy? Whether the figure should be 2½ per cent. or 4 per cent. is a matter that we can discuss in great detail perhaps more appropriately in an economic debate, but if this is the policy, what sanctions are they proposing to use?
This is really the nub of the question. If the Government are not prepared to use sanctions, if employers give increases which are too great according to the guidance of the Council on Prices, Productivity and Incomes, or if industrial trouble arises and some unions co-operate while others fail to do so, how are they to be brought into line?
It is all very well talking about settling our troubles in a free society. We all want this. But we must recognise that there is a completely changed situation, particularly now when the Government have such a large direct and considerable indirect influence on the economy, through their own expenditure, as well as through local government and the nationalised industries. The encouraging thing is that more and more Members on both sides of the House are accepting the idea of a wages policy.
I was reading the report of an interesting short debate on industrial relations, in which I took part, on 17th March last, when the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) spoke in favour of a wages policy and referred to the out-of-date method of settling wages by brute force. The hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Lee) said:
I shall tell the House a secret which I hope will be kept inside these four walls. I nearly got thrown out of the Ministry of Labour ten years ago for producing a national wages policy.
He went on in the next column:
I still believe that in the age to which we must attune ourselves, the silly horse-dealing nonsense to which collective bargaining has come is quite inapplicable to the conditions of the future."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th March, 1961; Vol. 636, c. 1979–80.]
This afternoon we heard a leading trade unionist, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Padley), say precisely the same thing, namely, that he was in favour of a wages policy. It appeared to be his


view that many other trade unionists were also in favour of such a policy.
As far as I am aware, the Labour Party Front Bench has never said that it is in favour of a wages policy. I hope that the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) will indicate tonight whether his party is now officially in favour of the settlement of wages in a rational manner, guided by scientific assessments of people's contribution in their own work, and the like. I do not need to spell out the sort of things which go with what is understood by "a national wages policy".

Mr. Percy Collick: I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong when he talks about the trade unions not having a wages policy. All the trade unions have their own wages policy. It may not be the one that the hon. Gentleman likes, but they have a wages policy.

Mr. Holt: I do not think that what I am talking about is the same thing that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. It is certainly not what the hon. Member for Newton was referring to in the debate which I have mentioned. The jungle of collective bargaining cannot possibly be called a national wages policy.

Mr. William Shepherd: Does the hon. Gentleman really believe that this arrangement under which the contribution of society is scientifically judged will work?

Mr. Holt: I do not pretend that it is not without great difficulties, but to those hon. Members who laugh it out of court I say, "Are you satisfied with the present arrangements? Do you think that they will go on for ever? Is this the best that we can do in settling wages in industry?" I do not think that anyone can come to the conclusion that it is. Therefore, I should have thought that in a pragmatic, empirical way we might endeavour to move towards a national wages policy in which these things are settled more rationally. This means, however, that those in the trade unions who agree to it are, by implication, giving up the idea that they can change the relationship between the incomes of wage and salary earners and incomes obtained in other ways.
There may be some idea that over the last few years—certainly this has been true in years gone by—due to strong negotiating, a larger proportion of the national income has gone to wage and salary earners than before. It may be said by some people that this is obviously not true because the Clores and other people have had a larger share. The figures in Government publications over the last ten years show that the proportion has hardly changed at all. Wages and salaries have accounted for two-thirds of the national income throughout the last ten years.
Wage negotiations are about differentials—between skills, between the unpleasantness and pleasantness of a job, between shift working and day working, between night work and day work, and so on. I would have thought that that was the sort of thing which should be settled on a rational basis. The settlement of it by some kind of brute force method is completely out of date.

Sir Spencer Summers: It would be very difficult in logic to dissent from the hon. Gentleman's argument that these things should be settled rationally. What we are waiting to hear is how he would deal with those who are not willing to settle them logically—in other words, sanctions?

Mr. Holt: One of the prerequisites which the hon. Member for Ogmore said that trade unions would lay down before agreeing to participate in a national wages policy was that the Government should seek the agreement of and obtain the confidence of both sides. Secondly, he said that the basis of such a policy should be social justice. This means that the Government must agree considerably to limit the extent to which they change people's net incomes through the Budget. The third thing that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was dynamic expansion.
It seems to me that sanctions is the nub of the matter. If we have a sanction, it may be that it will be very little used, but, if we have not a sanction, it seems to me that, although we might in the end achieve a national wages policy by a lot of people of good will on both sides plugging away hard at it, it will take a long time to achieve, and I do not think that we can wait that time.
We have to have a sanction, and I think that can be found through the Budget on firms. Suppose that the National Economic Development Council says that this coming year there can be average wage increases of 2½ per cent.—this is a purely hypothetical figure—then, since it fixes an average, it should also fix a ceiling. Most industries would comply with the average. Some industries which were expanding, needed to attract labour, and were doing very well and which could pay more than the average figure would be allowed to do so up to the ceiling. The sanction would be used on those industries which went over the ceiling.
Before an agreement under which a firm proposed to pay an increase which was more than the ceiling was made—this would apply to all agreements—it would be notified to the Ministry of Labour. Through the Ministry of Labour, or through the planning board of the Treasury, a message would be sent back saying, "What you propose is more than the ceiling. We do not agree that you should make this increase. If you do, a sanction will be applied." That sanction should be an increase in the company's Profits Tax.

Mr. Charles Curran: Let us suppose that what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is done and that the arbitration tribunal makes an award which is in excess of the ceiling. Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that the Government should be authorised to override that award?

Mr. Holt: My support of this amendment is, as it were, conditional on the acceptance that under a national wages policy even arbitration machinery would be altered. I do not consider that the arbitration machinery is now in the form that it would be under what I describe as my national wages policy. Under such a policy the arbitrator would be subject to the limits which I have suggested firms would be under in their own free negotiations.

Mr. Hare: I hope that the hon. Member will find out from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition whether or not the Labour Party would wish to alter the arbitration machinery in the way that he suggests.

Mr. Holt: I should be delighted to discover that. I have asked the Opposition whether the Deputy Leader of the Opposition will tell the House tonight their view about a national wages policy. I should have thought that if they supported a national wages policy they would have to agree to some alteration in arbitration arrangements. That is not Ito say that it is right to break up the present system of arbitration before the new policy has been introduced. That is my criticism of the Government.

Mr. A. R. Wise: It is true that a sanction could be imposed by increasing a firm's Profits Tax, but would not that mean about 150 different rates of Profit Tax?

Mr. Holt: I would not have thought that there need to be an exact mathematical calculation that a firm's Profits Tax should be increased by a certain percentage. Rather, there should be certain penal rates of Profits Tax, and if a firm did not carry out what had been agreed as the national policy, perhaps its Profits Tax should be increased by 50 per cent or doubled.

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: I am not so much interested in what happens after the institution of a national wages policy. I am wondering what happens before such a policy and how, in the hon. Member's opinion, one job would be related to another and we would start a national wages policy. Do we start merely at the time when the Liberal Party drops the hat, or do we say that we should have a Royal Commission, which should sit for the next ten years while Britain becomes bankrupt, before we arrive at the relationship between, say, the dustman and the dentist?

Mr. Holt: We cannot get everything perfect in this imperfect world. If agreement could be obtained on both sides on a national wages policy on the lines I have suggested, or in some other way—I am not particularly attached to what I have said; it is merely my suggestion—it should not be impossible to make a number of quick interim alterations in the differentials of people who obviously are getting less than they ought to be getting. It should not require a Royal Commission to settle that.
I hope that when the Leader of the House and, indeed, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition wind up the debate they will seriously apply their minds to the question of a national wages policy. Little though my experience is concerning industry, and it is even less concerning the trade union movement, I nevertheless feel that people as a whole are ready for a sensible method of settling wages. The whole atmosphere of the country is against strikes, unofficial strikes and all this crazy kind of chaos. People want to see fair wages in relation to the job that is being done. If we had a strong lead from the Government—which, whatever the niceties of political fighting in this matter, must have the support of both trade union leaders and, probably, the official Opposition—we could move into a new era in industrial relations.

7.23 p.m.

Mr. William Shepherd: I feel certain that even the difficult question of a wages policy is not as difficult as the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) made out. I was having a little argument with one of my constituents during the week-end and I said that the Liberal Party in the House of Commons was the most impracticable bunch of people I had ever met. My constituent dissented from this view. I only wish that I had brought him along to listen to the hon. Member for Bolton, West this afternoon.
It would be wrong of the House to take the view that there is anything sacred in the existing methods of wage negotiation and that there are not means by which we could improve the existing state of affairs. If, however, we could have the conditions under which a perfect wages system would work, we would not need a wages system at all.
The thing that strikes me today is the absence of any understanding by hon. Members opposite of the dire position in which the country stands. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh and think it highly amusing. Obviously, we cannot go about making declarations which are calculated to undermine the external value of the £. I ask any hon. Member opposite who laughs to consider what would have been the position of the country had not some of the external factors, the terms of trade and

other things, been favourable during the last twelve months. [HON MEMBERS: "Hear hear."] Although hon. Members opposite say "Hear, hear", when it comes to appreciating the need for action to stem what would otherwise be a disastrous consequence hardly any member of the Opposition gives any support to a policy designed to save the £ from destruction.
I do not want to preach to hon. Members opposite, but I want to say this. In all the trouble that has existed in all the changes of fortune that have overtaken the country in the last seventeen years, apart from the short time that they were in office, the Front Bench of the Labour Party has never given any public support to the responsible elements of trade union leadership. I recollect only one declaration—it was made during the weekend—by the Leader of the Opposition in which, in his official position, he gave political support to the responsible leaders of the Labour movement in the trade union section. The action of Her Majesty's Opposition in these circumstances and the circumstances of the past, when they have failed to give support to the reasonable and responsible leaders of the trade union movement, is a grave dereliction of duty and, in my view, calculated to damage the country's prospects.
I do not pretend that an Opposition should support the Government. It is the duty of the Opposition to oppose. At the same time, however, it is the duty of the Opposition to bear in mind the basic position of the country and of the community. In my view, the Opposition have abysmally failed to give the sort of support that is needed.

Mr. Loughlin: I can understand the hon. Member putting forward that kind of argument, but I cannot understand why, when both the Opposition Front Bench and back benchers on this side were arguing with the Government Front Bench about the economic position of the country, we were told that we had never had it so good.

Mr. Shepherd: That ignores the situation with which we have to deal and the situation with which we have been dealing since July. I do not for one moment


withdraw my strictures against the Leader of the Opposition.
I want to try to put the matter into perspective. In terms of our material welfare, we are in a fairly good position. Almost every member of the community is much better off than he expected to be ten years ago. The whole community, including those who happen to earn the lower wages, is relatively much better off than people expected to be a decade ago. It is not asking very much, in view of the seriousness of the external position, to say that for a short time there must be restraint on the pressure for wage increases.
We are not asking people who have no food to eat, or who do not know where they will find a pair of shoes for their children; we are asking people who, on the whole, have enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world to exercise temporary restraint so that there will not be danger to the whole community. I do not think that that is really asking too much of people of this kind.

Mr. Gunter: I do not think that the hon. Member is doing himself justice. What I tried to say was that we accept the aim and that we are fully cognisant of the necessity for restraint, but by the means they have used to achieve the end the Government have made it far more difficult to attain the desirable end—by the stupidity of their efforts.

Mr. Shepherd: I quite understand the hon. Member's view. I would not pretend to the House that I think that in a free society the task of trying to obtain even a temporary restraint is a simple one. I do not even think that it can be done with absolute fairness.
I am not pretending that I think that what the Government have done is absolutely fair, because by the very nature of things it means that those workers over whom the Government have direct or semi-direct control must of necessity feel these impacts more harshly than those in private enterprise, and it must mean, for example, that some workers cease to improve their situation, whereas, perhaps, some people engaged in a business activity can do very well indeed.
I accept that this cannot be equitable in all senses, but I do say, to those who contest my view, that the overall need

of the country at present overrules any of these other considerations, and that if we do not try to safeguard our own external position we shall all crash down.
When we look at the country today we see a nation doing to itself what Hitler failed to do. I repeat that if conditions in terms of trade and other factors had not been favourable to us in the last twelve months we should have succeeded in driving ourselves into bankruptcy.

Mr. Spriggs: It is vital that we should understand the facts. Has the hon. Gentleman read the account in the national Press this morning about the rents of council houses in St. Helens going up by 7s. 6d. and, if so, whether he agrees with the Government's financial policy of forcing local authorities to put up rents?

Mr. Shepherd: I do not think that that is particularly relevant to what I have said.

Mr. Spriggs: It is relevant.

Mr. Loughlin: Of course it is.

Mr. Shepherd: I have said that I accept that it is inherent in this policy that there must he a certain amount of unfairness, that it cannot be avoided; but that what is at stake is so important that it is necessary to get this restraint, and that if we do not get this restraint we all go down.
I would now say a few words about what has been happening in terms of the use of industrial force. I am not one of those, as the House knows, who oppose the trade union movement. I have always been a strong supporter of trade unionism in every sense of the word, but I do see, with some uneasiness, what appears to be the growing use of force. In 1962, it is almost incredible that in a nation which is relatively well off, in which there is a very high level of employment and good working conditions on the whole, there should be this attempt to settle issues by force. Surely, by now, the idea of going to strike should almost have been removed from our minds. It is not, on the whole, the action of a civilised society.
Obviously, there must be differences between workers as to the relative values of their contributions to society.


Obviously, there must be differences and there must be clashes, but to settle these sorts of differences by imposing upon themselves and upon others distress and loss surely is insupportable in 1962. I should have thought that we could have got some better suggestion in 1962.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Tell the Government.

Mr. Shepherd: Surely the time has come when the trade union movement itself should consider whether it could not be a little more concerned with the rather lower-paid people, and not always the ones with the biggest industrial force, pressing their particular claim at the expense of the lower paid. I should have thought that the time had come, too, when the trade union movement should do something for the lower-paid workers without the higher-paid workers saying they are to get a proportion. If hon. Gentlemen opposite would do something within their own movement to prosecute that idea I should, personally, be very grateful for that.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We shall make better progress if there is a little less interruption.

Mr. Shepherd: Clearly, one of the basic things needed, if we are to do some of the things I hope we all want to do, is the establishment of better industrial relations. The Minister of Labour said that those relations were good and that the machinery was well-established and, on the whole, working well. I accept all those statements, but I still think that there is a good deal which is lacking, and that what is lacking is in the positive sense. I feel no real urgency on the part of the employers and employed to contribute towards the national good. I see today still two nations instead of one, and I believe that we have got very quickly to the situation where we must have one nation instead of two, and that both sides have got to make a substantial contribution to this end.
I believe that employers should make the biggest contribution to this end, because I think that today they have not given the leadership they are capable of giving and which ought to have given. My hon. Friend the Member for

Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) said, very rightly I think, that there has been too often between employers and employed a very cosy understanding at the expense of the consumer. It is one of the difficulties in a full employment and very high demand society.
I say, however, that one of the biggest defects in our existing society, as compared with even sixty years ago, is the lack of leadership by employers. I know that to be an employer—as I am one—is not a particularly easy operation today, and that there are plenty of problems—and for expanding businesses there are many problems—but I think that employers have not paid enough attention to labour relations. They have relegated that to a rather minor position in the order of things instead of regarding it as one of the most important duties they have to carry out, and they have not given, in my opinion, the sort of leadership which it is necessary to give to make the nation conscious of its needs and its duties.
I will be harsh and say that many employers have become more National-Assistance minded than employees. Too many employers have the view that, if things are wrong to business, it is not a question of "What is wrong with us?" but, "What is wrong with the Government?" If employers do not display a spirit of independence and resilience they can hardly expect those who work for them—or with them, as it should be—to display the qualities which are necessary for our survival. I do not want to be harsh, because there are employers who do all these things. I know them. On the other hand, there are far too many who do not, and I say that the function of an employer as a leader of society in a full-employment State is a very important one, and that, on the whole, too many of them have failed to carry out their function.
I turn for a moment to the question of what we can do. We cannot, I am quite certain, do it by regulation, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bolton, West has just said. I am quite convinced that to establish machinery, however important it may be, is not in itself the answer. I quite understand that hon. Members opposite may want a different kind of machinery. I do not dissent from it, but what is important if we are


to survive is that we should have a new spirit in the country. Nothing short of it will put us right.
If we try to establish by Government regulation the sort of control over the economy which is really needed, we inevitably must employ powers quite outside the scope of a free society, but whatever we do within the limits of a free society can be undone if the will of the people is not with what the Government are seeking to do. Therefore, the first essential in the community is a greater sense of national purpose than we have had up to now.
I know that hon. Members opposite will say that the Government have not supported and fostered that. I think there is some ground for criticism that if one appeals to people's purely material natures it is difficult to get them to pursue a policy of sacrifices. But whatever the mistakes may or may not have been what we require now is a greater sense of national purpose, because the difference between success and failure here is so small.
We are not a nation which is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy through sheer incompetence. On the whole, we are a level-headed lot of people with a fair amount of intelligence, a great deal of ingenuity and considerable skill and knowledge in industry, who ought, if we act sensibly, to be able to win ourselves a reasonable living in the world. There is little about us that is really wrong except a tendency to pursue not a national purpose and policy, but our own selfish sectional ends.
No amount of machinery or regulations devised by Government and no attempt to control the economy through economic or fiscal means will be a success unless we achieve a sense of national purpose. Unless we achieve that sense of national purpose we are doomed, but if we can achieve a greater sense of singleness of purpose we can go ahead in this latter part of the century and maintain our position in the world.

7.43 p.m.

Mr. Percy Collick: I have listened, as I always do with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd). I do

not think that anyone can question his sincerity. I thought that he could well direct all he said to the Prime Minister, because if there was anything in what he said about a national purpose it seemed to me that the one person in the country who ought to understand that a little more than he does is the Prime Minister. Never once has anything of that kind come from the right hon. Gentleman. Never once has it come from any aspect of Government policy.
Sharing as I do a recognition of the economic plight of the nation, which is fundamental to the country, I can appreciate the drift of the hon. Member's arguments, but he might ask himself what hope he or anyone else can have of securing a national purpose in a situation in which the Government behave as they have behaved aver the pay pause and all that has gone with it. The happenings in London today are a testimony to that.
I have spent the best years of my life in association with the railways in one form or another, and I cannot recall an occasion when there has been such a sense of bitterness and frustration among railwaymen as there is today. The most pregnant thing that the Minister of Labour said today was that he did not want to talk about the railways. I can quite understand that, and I can also understand that possibly that may be the reason why the Government intend to leave the Minister of Transport on his seat rather than allow him to speak in this debate.
Apparently it is the Leader of the House who is to wind up the debate. Silence has been enforced permanently on the Minister of Transport, who is the one person who ought to give an account of himself at the Dispatch Box. But because the Government sense that he would be faced with an utterly impossible task, and because they have had a little experience of the speeches we get from the Minister of Transport, they have deemed it wise to give the Leader of the House the task of winding up.
Why is it that railwaymen feel so frustrated and that this bitterness has expressed itself in the way it has today? Anyone who knows the simple history of the facts, which I propose to recite in a moment, can see clearly why all this has happened. First, I do not know


whether the Government really believe that the pay pause has been a success. Are they really proud of what has followed from it? If they are, they need to think about it a little longer. People like teachers, railwaymen and civil servants do not complain bitterly about the Government's actions if they think that they have been fairly treated. It just does not happen that way.
Why is it that this feeling persists? Even if one accepts that the country is facing an economic plight, and even if one accepts what the hon. Member for Cheadle said a moment ago about the reason for having something like a pay pause, I still cannot understand how any hon. Member opposite, including even the Chancellor, who wants the pay pause to be successful, could have gone about it in this way. The Chancellor must have been almost a madman to have gone about it in the way he did. He must be a one-eyed Chancellor who is little short of being a madman. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] I will tell hon Members why.
How can we expect ordinary working people who count their shillings and pence to be influenced by any supposed national appeal such as that which the hon. Member for Cheadle had in mind when the very man who makes that appeal is the man who some months or so before he made it proposed in the House to give £83 million a year to the wealthiest people in the country? If we want a national appeal it must be based on ground other than that.
This is the difference between Sir Stafford Cripps and the present Government. Let it be said about Stafford Cripps, anyhow, that when he was faced with economic difficulties he made his appeal to the nation, and in the main the nation responded to it because he was a man of a moral integrity which was beyond any question. Who can say that about the Government? Who can say that about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man who makes cryptic remarks about the social injustice imposed by Surtax on a man with £5,000 a year? Then the Government expect the workers to accept a pay pause. Frankly, I think that a pay pause in these circumstances was nonsense and doomed to failure.
I will tell the House why I think so. A pay pause is not possible unless two considerations are satisfied. If one is to have a pay pause and enforce it, one must have a prices pause and a rent pause. I would go so far as to say that one could well have a profits pause, but a rent pause and a prices pause are essential if there is to be a wages pause. Neither the present Chancellor nor the most extraordinarily clever Chancellor of all time could get away with a pay pause unless he faced those two factors. I want to illustrate that in the practical terms of a railwayman.
The Government might say, not unreasonably, that they have not the machinery to enforce a prices pause or a rent pause. But they had the machinery—they deliberately invented it—to enable the landlords to push up rent by well over £100 million a year. It was deliberate policy, and the Government did it with understanding and forethought with the object of increasing by well over £100 million the rent going to landlords.
That is why the pay pause is ridiculous and impossible. It is the reason why so late in the day the Chancellor has decided to abandon it. We were told today that on 31st March it comes to an end. On April Fools' Day we are to start something else. We are then to have the "guiding light". I do not know what that is, but apparently something is going to guide us. [Interruption.] The guidance may he like that of the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt), not very brilliant. He tried to tell us something about a national wages policy. I was as clear about it when he finished as I was when he started. I imagine the "guiding light" will be something of that kind.
I have heard of this many times. We had it from the Minister of Transport, who has so discreetly kept out of the Chamber today. I should have liked to have said a few things to him, but he has not been here.

Mr. A. Lewis: Perhaps the Minister of Transport cannot get here because of the traffic jam outside.

Mr. Collick: At all events, the right hon. Gentleman is not in this Chamber, and that is where he ought to be. However, he might not be able to answer one


or two of the questions that I should like to put to him.
Railwaymen feel aggrieved not so much over a few shillings this way or that. That is not the issue. They are aggrieved to an intensity they have never known before because the pay pause suddenly inflicted upon them affects a wages claim which has been outstanding since last May, long before the Chancellor had ideas about a pay pause. That claim has been going through the long, weary processes of the negotiating machinery. Suddenly, when the claim reaches a stage where they think some settlement may result, the Minister of Transport steps in and tells Dr. Beeching, in effect, "This must go to arbitration." This all happened in 24 hours.
I am a little puzzled about this. A very short time ago the Minister of Transport announced Dr. Beeching's appointment to the House, telling us that he was, presumably, something of a superhuman man. I felt that, according to the Minister, he was something like the Archangel Gabriel, and I hoped that he would be protected so that he would be given time to carry out his difficult job. What happened? Apparently this great man, upon whom the Minister of Transport relies to go far in getting British Railways out of their difficulties, is not to the Minister or the Government a fit and proper person to deal with the modest wage claimed by the railwaymen.
I do not blame Dr. Beeching for what has happened. There was reason to believe—I put it no higher than that, and I think I am as well informed about these matters as anybody—that Dr. Beeching was about to make an offer to the railwaymen on the merits of the case. When the Minister of Transport got to know this, he made it abundantly clear that it was not to be done and issued his famous letter in effect challenging Dr. Beeching to do it. Dr. Beeching understood enough to say, "If this is the Government's attitude, let them do it. Why should I take it on? It is for the Government to come out in the open and make their decision."
There is apparently no one on the Government Front Bench at the moment who is ready to answer for the Government. It is funny how the occupants of

the Government Front Bench drift away when they are about to be faced with awkward questions.

Mr. A. Lewis: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour is there.

Mr. Collick: Yes. Perhaps he will choose to answer.

Mr. Manuel: Answer.

Mr. Collick: Dr. Beeching made it clear that he was not willing to carry this out. That is why a decision was made so quickly—in about 24 hours. Then the Minister had to send a letter to Dr. Beeching making it clear that the Government were not parties to what was happening.
There are one or two pertinent questions which arise, and I should like the Government to give us the answers. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour is capable of taking a few notes.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Alan Green): indicated assent.

Mr. Collick: I am glad to know that. One does not always know, because there are such changes on the Government Front Bench from week to week we hardly know who is who. Anyhow, I invite the hon. Gentleman to ask the Leader of the House to tell us frankly why Lord Robens, the Chairman of the National Coal Board, can make wages offers to the miners while the Chairman of the British Transport Commission cannot to his own employees. We expected an answer to this question at the beginning of the debate so that we could discuss it. Since we have not yet had it, perhaps we can have a word or two about it before the debate ends.
I want to speak now about the position as it appears to some railwaymen. There are plenty of men whom I personally know who are 55, 56 or 57 years of age, who have given a lifetime of service to the railways. Consequent upon the closures in Scotland and the curtailment of services they are now being told, "This depot is closing and you can go here, here or anywhere. If you do, you can retain a job." What does such


a man say to himself, at 55, 56 or 57 years of age and after a lifetime of service on the railways? If he moves from the depot where he is and goes, for example, to Crewe, or anywhere else, what does he face? Because of the Tory Rent Act, he is faced with having to pay a rent double and treble what any reasonable rent ought to be.
Good gracious, I am trustee for a dear old lady, who lives in one room in Golders Green, and I pay £1 12s. 6d. every week for that one room in London. What on earth do hon. Members think the position of a locomotive driver is when he finds himself transferred from some other part of the country to London? If he has to pay £1 12s. 6d. for one room, what has he to pay for the rent of a house or a flat? The Government have made no exercise to control these rents, but, as every hon. Gentleman opposite knows and everybody on this side knows, they are responsible for having put them up, and having put them up to the absurd limits which we now know.
These are the practical problems, the practical issues and the day-to-day things that working railwaymen are having to face and make decisions about every day. Can any one wonder that, after all this long-drawn-out ten months of going through this procedure of wages negotiations, when the Government step in and say to the Minister, "No, you must not allow Dr. Beeching to make a settlement this must go to arbitration," does any reasonable person wonder that there are transport difficulties in London today?
What we ought to understand now is that these problems and difficulties lie directly at the door of the Government. After all, why are the railways in financial difficulties? They were perfectly solvent until 1953. Right up to 1953, when the Tory Government introduced its own Transport Act, British Railways were making surpluses, and every experienced transport person knows that it is largely because of the Government's transport policy that the British transport system, and the railways in particular, are now in the red. Now, we hear all this talk about the "guiding light" that is to determine wages after April Fool's Day. Hon. Members on the Government side have been making

what appear to be quite serious contributions to this debate on economic theory and all the rest. I ask them to ponder this sort of question and to see for themselves the way in which this pay pause has been working out.
One of the first bodies of workers in dispute over this business were the airport loaders at London Airport, and what happened? The loaders at London Airport were making certain demands for wages increases, and, as everybody knows, for several days London Airport was virtually stopped. What did the Minister of Aviation do? What was his part in this job? I do not want to go through the whole rigmarôle of what happened in detail, because everybody knows broadly what happened. They reclassified the loaders, called them by another name, and put up their pay to more than the men themselves had been asking for. That was how that dispute was solved, and the Minister of Aviation was responsible, on behalf of the Government, for what happened.
The next dispute that come along under the pay pause was the dispute affecting the electricity industry. What happened there? It is very illuminating. The Chairman of the Electricity Authority, who knows his job no less than anybody on the Treasury Bench knows his, understood that unless he did something about this—if I am rightly informed—it looked as if they were going to lose a considerable number of their most highly skilled men. In order to save the industry from losing these men, they made a wages agreement, and the Minister of Fuel and Power, so far as we know, made no interference. Certainly, the Chairman was called over the coals later by the Government. The point is that the demand was met.
What was the next one? The miners had a claim, and Lord Robens, for the National Coal Board, made the miners an offer. Again, no interference. That has happened in every case. Then come the railwaymen, and the Minister of Transport says, "No. No negotiations, you go to arbitration." Will the Leader of the House please tell us tonight—if the hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench will kindly make the necessary notes—why these differences? These are the practical questions to which the men want answers.
Let us take another thing affecting the railwaymen, in which the Government are directly involved. For two long years, what was called the Guillebaud Committee of Inquiry 'held an inquiry into railwaymen's wages. The railwaymen put up with all this business for two long years, and the railway unions, my own among them, were saying to their members, "All right, you wait, we shall get the report and act on it." For two long years, the railwaymen have been waiting for that report, and ultimately it came, and the Prime Minister stood at that Box and said that, on behalf of the Government, they accepted the principles of the Guillebaud Report and would see that they were 'honoured.
If we want to find out the cause of half the trouble among the railwaymen today, I say that it is because they do not know where they stand in regard to the Guillebaud Report. Is the Guillebaud Report still to be honoured by the Government, or have the Government run away from it? The railwaymen believe that the Government have run away from it, and they have reason, and documents to prove it if need be. It is the fact that the vocal railwaymen of this country believe that the Government have now gone back on the Guillebaud Report which is largely responsible for some of the things that are now happening.
Another wage settlement has recently been reached, and I put this to hon. Gentleman opposite who today have been talking about productivity and who have been saying that our economy is so stretched that it might stand perhaps 2½ per cent. or no more than 3 per cent. This is the very argument which one hears about this new "guiding light", which will determine wages of the basis of productivity. I put this proposition to hon. Members opposite. The fire brigades union recently had a campaign, with which every Member of Parliament is familiar, and arising out of that campaign they had a settlement. I make no complaint about that, because I have an immense admiration for firemen and the work they do, but I understand, from information that has reached me, that a fire station officer's rate will go up now 18·8 per cent. What hon. Members opposite have to answer is how the wages of a fireman are determined on the basis of

productivity. Are they saying the bigger the fire the bigger the pay? That is why this economic jargon is utter nonsense. Haw is the 18 per cent. of the fire station officer to be related to the wage of a locomotive driver?
I was interested in a letter which appeared in the Daily Express last Thursday from the Mayor of Peterborough to the Minister of Transport. I do not know where the right hon. Gentleman is. He has not been in the Chamber since the first speech of the debate, but I was going to ask him what reply he intended to send to the Mayor of Peterborough, Mr. Charles Swift, who asked the Minister of Transport:
Would you be kind enough to tell me it I am wasting my time and talent on British Railways?
After deductions I take home less than £9 15s. a week".
He is a locomotive driver.
My chauffeur's pay and conditions are far better.
The attendants at the city council's conveniences receive £12 6s. 5d. for a 52-hour week. By comparison I would receive £12 8s. 24d. for the same hours.
The gentlemen who empty our dustbins average £12 15s.
Apart from my chauffeur, no atom of responsibility is required, nor training.
How can that sort of thing be justified? I assure the Minister of Transport that not only the Mayor of Peterborough but 60,000 other locomotive men are keenly interested in his answer.
Hon. Members seem to get less and less material answers from Ministers to pertinent questions. In our debate on the Transport Bill in November, I asked about the Guillebaud Report. I asked the Government to make it clear where they stood in that matter. The Home Secretary wound up that debate, and we must give him credit for being the first person to admit that he knew nothing about transport. He began his speech by saying something akin to that. I suppose that he can excuse himself by saying that he knew nothing about the matter.
But tonight there will be thousands of railwaymen waiting to hear the Government's reply to the debate. They had expected a reply from the Minister of Transport, who is the villain of the piece. They can now be told that the


Minister of Transport discreetly chose to keep out of the Chamber for the whole debate. If the Government think that that is a creditable way of treating the House of Commons on a day like this, then that is an opinion which will not be shared by their own supporters, or by those who support us.

8.15 p.m.

Sir Spencer Summers: Almost every speaker during the last two hours or more has taken at least 30 minutes to make his speech. [HON. MEMBERS: "So what?"] I was about to say that I hope to take half the time which most other hon. Members have taken. If there are fewer interruptions, it will be shorter still. I apologise for the fact that I was unable to be present for the two opening speeches. My absence was accounted for by the fact that I was concerned with the Select Committee on Estimates.
Because I want to be brief, I do not want to say much about the speech of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Collick), but I must say that when he poured scorn on what he called economic jargon and almost any kind of restraint, and was sarcastic about productivity, he should have remembered that if people mistrust placing power in the hands of the trade unions, because they fear that it may be used solely for selfish purposes, what he said will only intensify that mistrust.
The situation we are debating is very serious and I do not think that the public—by that I mean the working folk—the trade unions or the Government can escape responsibility for it. It has just been said that a pay pause is not possible or workable—which I take to mean acceptable—unless there is rent and price control. I do not believe that the public agrees. I do not believe that there is fundamental criticism of the essence of the Government's case, namely, to try to prevent the cost of living from rising by keeping a restraint on wages. The method of implementing it may be challenged here and there, but people realise that wages play a predominant part in costs and that a start has to be made somewhere.
For ten or fifteen years no Government have been able to halt inflation, and public opinion is now determined

to support any Government which are believed to be able to stop inflation. For that reason, I believe that the public fundamentally accepts the notion behind the Government's policy. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I shall be very much quicker if hon. Members allow me to make my speech without interruption or, if they stand up to interrupt if I give way. [An HON. MEMBER: "You talk such rubbish."' Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I heard an hon. Member opposite say, "You talk such rubbish". I hope he was not referring to you.
I find fault with the Government not for the essence of their policy, but for the way in which they have presented it to the public. My right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal has had great success with the Common Market issue because of his ability to present complicated matters in understandable language which the man in the street is able to appreciate. But the same cannot be said of the Government's efforts to present their case for the restraint of wages and what has, unfortunately, been termed the pay pause. If they wish their policy to be governed by consent, as is essential, they have to be far more effective about presenting it.
The idea that the Government should interfere with arbitration has been challenged. But it is essential, if inflation is to be halted, that certain areas, which have been thought sacrosanct—"hallowed ground" was one phrase I heard earlier—should suffer interference if we are to produce changes from what has been the situation since the war.

Mr. Manuel: rose—

Sir S. Summers: No. I will not give way. I said earlier that I came into this debate late. I wish to take half the time taken by other hon. Members, and I will not prolong it by giving way to other hon. Members.
I criticise the unions because, despite their objections to the Government's handling of pay affairs since last July, they should have joined the National Economic Development Council as soon as the opportunity was afforded. Since the offer was first made nothing fundamental has changed in the situation. The unions claim to be partners with a party which attaches great importance to the planning of the economy. One


cannot apply planning to the country's needs and omit wages.

Mr. Manuel: rose—

Sir S. Summers: It is no use interrupting. I shall not give way. The hon. Gentleman had better leave me alone, even if he is enjoying himself.
It was, therefore, quite inappropriate for the unions to fail to take the opportunity afforded to them of joining the new Council. When it comes to the working folk, I cannot help thinking that something very strange is happening, because, although there are only about two months to go before the restrictions are over, people seem impatient and unwilling to wait that length of time until the things they object to are out of the way. I see that hon. Members shake their heads.

Mr. Monslow: The hon. Gentleman is creating a number of erroneous impressions. Is he really suggesting that the Post Office workers and the railwaymen are responsible for the inflationary situation? They are in a deflationary situation.

Sir S. Summers: That interruption has nothing to do with the points I am making. There are two months to go before the restrictions of which complaint is made come to an end. There is no good reason why they should not wait until the situation has changed instead of resorting to unofficial strikes, which is contrary to the express request of their union leaders. Why Members opposite should resent criticism of unofficial strikes when they seek to support trade unions is past understanding. It is quite contrary to what their own leader said the other day.

Mr. Manuel: rose—

Sir S. Summers: The hon. Gentleman had better sit down. I would rather he kept quiet, even if he has a smile on his face. I shall not give way.
This is typical of the situation. It is a malaise, of which I shall have more to say in a moment, that people are unwilling to wait such a short time. What constructive comments should one make within an analysis of that kind? It has been said that it is dangerous to issue the figure of 2½ per cent. as the

limit for increases above which harm might follow to the economy, because it will be treated as a minimum for demands. I do not think that that argument is valid, because one can hardly imagine a wage increase of less than 2½ per cent. Had the minimum been 5 or 6 per cent. then it would have been an arguable proposition to regard that as dangerous, but to build upon 2½ per cent. puts paid to that argument.
If it is dangerous to negotiate a settlement in excess of 2½ per cent.—and that is a minimum which a great many people would think insufficient—then one thing follows as surely as night follows day: the sooner we can get production up by more than 2½ per cent. so that wage increases in excess of 2½ per cent. can be offered without danger to the economy, the better.

Mr. A. Lewis: rose—

Sir S. Summers: I am not going to give way.

Mr. A. Lewis: Where are the members of the Government?

Sir S. Summers: I am not going to take notice of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis). I hope that you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, will not have to, either.
I want to say a word about the railway situation on which great stress was laid by the hon. Member for Birkenhead.

Mr. A. Lewis: Another member of the Government has just arrived.

Sir S. Summers: For goodness' sake, let the hon. Member for West Ham, North keep quiet. I shall get through my speech so much quicker if he does.
The railway situation cannot be treated in isolation. I am well aware that, on the ground of comparability, there is a case for increases for railwaymen. I am also aware that, in certain parts of England, the need for an increase is much greater than the need in other parts. But this cannot be treated in isolation.

Mr. S. Silverman: Why?

Sir S. Summers: I shall explain.

Mr. S. Silverman: I shall try intelligently to follow an intelligent answer.

Sir S. Summers: If I am provoked into taking a few minutes more, I hope that my hon. Friends whose time I will take up will forgive the discourtesy to which I am being subjected.
The situation of the railways cannot be decided purely on grounds of comparability. Their financial situation makes it more difficult to deal impartially with claims that may be made for increases. What has constantly happened in the past is that people have judged their pay not by what their work is worth, but by how they compare with some other industry or some other occupation. It is quite certain that if, at the time when restraint is still needed, a significant increase were made in railwaymen's wages sufficient to make good the disparity which has accrued on account of the delay in dealing with their affairs, it would be the signal for inordinate increases in other occupations which would completely destroy any prospects of defeating inflation.
It seems quite inevitable, therefore, that the railways must be treated with reference to other occupations and to the economy as a whole. Where this will end, I do not know. It may be that there will be a widespread strike. I find it very hard to believe that rational, commonsense people, such as are to be found on the railways, will decide, when told that their claims can be sent to arbitration, to have a railway strike in face of a proposal of that kind. At any rate, I hope that the Government will, if necessary, put it to the test, because I am quite certain that that is the only reasonable way, in the circumstances, to handle their affairs.

8.29 p.m.

Mr. John Hynd: One would find it rather difficult, as I did, to realise that we are discussing this subject in the House of Commons in 1962—a House which has hitherto been regarded as the temple of a free democratic society in which matters of wages, salaries and income in industry are decided by conciliation and negotiating procedure, which have been built up after many generations as the only alternative to industrial strife. What is happening now is taking place under a Government which not so very long ago were fighting Elections on the slogan, "Set the people free. Let each win for

himself what prizes he can. Let the best man win." That was the famous slogan of 1945 and of 1950. After listening to today's debate and to other debates which have preceded it, one wonders whether this is the same Government, the same Parliament and the same country.
We have heard a long and depressing story about the economic troubles and chaos into which a Tory Government have got the country after eleven years. Hon. Members opposite who have spoken have agreed that it has resulted in what we admit to be the underpayment of some of the essential workers of the country, and it is a situation to which, apparently, they see no solution. The performance of the Minister of Labour this afternoon, apart from being tragic, was a demonstration of the fact that he did not know what he was talking about. What has happened? Over and over again from the Government and their supporters we have heard that the Government have not interfered in the discussions going on between the British Transport Commission and the unions with regard to conditions of employment.
What actually happened was that when the British Transport Commission met the railway unions it told them that in the view of the Commission adequate wages must be paid to those engaged in the railway industry so that staff of the right calibre could be recruited. Since the last pay settlement there had been changes in the situation, including general rises in wages, which undoubtedly necessitated a review of the adequacy of railwaymen's wages. One of my hon. Friends gave instances of some of the improvements in wages and conditions since the pay pause. He did not refer to the increase given to the policemen or to the increase in Army pay. These increases have nothing to do with the measure of productivity for which the recipients are responsible.
The Minister says that he has not interfered with conciliation. He has told the railwaymen to go to arbitration which is part of the negotiating machinery. What the right hon. Gentleman has failed completely to understand is that to go to arbitration means to get somebody to arbitrate on the different views of two parties. In this


case that situation does not exist. As I have said, the British Transport Commission told the unions that it agrees that there is a case for the review of wages and salaries and that the Commission is prepared to make an offer. It has not been allowed to make the offer. The Government have said, "Go to arbitration." Suppose that, on the invitation of the Government, the railwaymen went to arbitration. What is there for the tribunal to arbitrate about? There is only one proposition, which had already been accepted in principle by the other side.
When the decision of the arbitration tribunal is made known, what will happen? Will the Government then say to the tribunal, to the railwaymen and to the Commission that they are not to be allowed to put the decision of the tribunal into operation? Of course the Government must do that, because the Minister said that there were two reasons why this attempt to get a settlement of the railwaymen's wages had been sabotaged by the Government. The first was the alarming financial position of the railways, in view of which there was no justification for imposing further on the taxpayers.
In passing, it is interesting to note that this alarming financial position of the railways, which involves the Government in contributing £140 million this year, is something less than half—nearly one-third—of what a Tory Government and their supporters cheerfully pay every year to the farming industry—and consider it in the national interest to do so—partly to enable a decent wage to be paid to farm workers. But with the railways it is another matter. Because of the alarming financial position of the railways, as it appears again this year, there is no justification for imposing further on the taxpayer. The financial position will still be the same on 1st April. If this is the basic consideration, shall we be told again on 1st April that because the financial position has not improved in the intervening two months the Government are still unable to agree to anything?
The tribunal must logically agree on the pay to railwaymen, because its co-position, as the Minister informed us today will be such that there will be

three parties represented—the railway unions, the Commission and an independent chairman. The unions and the Commission have already agreed that there is a case for an increase. Therefore, as the chairman is to be independent he will have no alternative but to agree with them. There will be nothing further about which to arbitrate. We shall therefore be in the position from which we started. The two parties will have agreed that there is a case for an immediate increase and the Government, which has refused to allow an increase, will have to refuse again after the arbitration. The arbitration will have been shown to have been a complete waste of time and will get us eventually only to the original position.
In the light of the financial position, which has been given as their main excuse, the Government must therefore—following the arbitration and, presumably, also from 1st April—discover that as the financial position is still the same they are unable to give anything at all. The fact is that this argument about the financial position of the railways—as I think hon. Members opposite and the Government will agree—is irrelevent, although it is put by the Minister as the first consideration. It is irrelevant because the attitude of the Government to the railway pay claim has been consistent with their policy on what they call the pay pause. That is the real reason. Whether there had been a deficit in railway finances or not, the Government would still take this attitude, because until 1st April there is to be no increase given where the Government can possibly avoid it. I think, therefore, that the Government should cut out the argument about the present financial position of the railways. Nevertheless the Government themselves have recognised—

Mr. A. Lewis: Will my hon. Friend note that there are only two hon. Members on the back benches opposite who have troubled to attend this debate, and that has been the position for most of the time?

Mr. Hynd: Of course, they are not involved in the income pause, as the Government call it. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) criticised the Government, not because of their


pay pause policy, but because he thought that they had not presented it properly to the country. I wish he were present now. The Government have done much better than he did, because they have tried to present it as a check on incomes whereas he frankly said that it was a check on wages and nothing else.
The Government have said that in their view
there are special factors which warrant some limited increase in the remuneration of railway workers.
If it is justified, why should they say that it must be postponed until 1st April? Why bring in the question of the railway deficit if it is not to prepare us for further delay? They might as well be frank about it. The Minister said that the reason was the economic position of the country. He said today that the reason behind it all is that we have been spending more than has been justified by the increase in national production. Who is meant by "we"? Who has been spending more than is justified? Does the Minister mean the Mayor of Peterborough, the railway engine driver or signalman, or the laundry girl on £5 10s. a week? Have they been responsible for inflation? Are they spending more than is justified by the national economic position?
If the Government say that railwaymen earning £10 a week are spending more than is justified, I should like any hon. Member opposite to tell me that he is not spending more than they are. Is any hon. Member opposite able to say that he is spending less? No, they will not say that. Is it the people behind them who are urging the Government into this pay pause? How many of them are spending more than is justified by the present economic position? Who is telling the Government all this?
What is this pay pause, anyway? It came into operation in July last year, but it had already been started by the Government as early as 1957 when they stopped the increase which had been promised to National Health Service employees. The Government were by then aware of the economic position into which they were getting the country. A long time after that they decided it was desirable to give the richest people of all—the Surtax payers—a handsome

bonus out of the economy which cannot afford to pay railwaymen more than £10 a week. Why did they give this to Surtax payers last April? It was to provide them with an incentive to more production and more exports, but what results have we had?
This afternoon the Minister claimed it even as a virtue of Government policy that dividends and profits were down. Dividends and profits are down, not because of any voluntary sacrifice on the part of shareholders or company directors, but because business is down, because exports are down and because, in spite of all the incentives to Surtax-payers, there has not been the result we were told that there would be.
The Surtax payers had to have their pound of flesh, but there was no incentive offered to men actually doing the job and producing the goods for export. A few minutes ago a representative of the steel industry was lecturing the workers on the need for restraint. In the last few months steel production has been going down and in Sheffield and Scunthorpe workers are on short time for the first time since nationalisation of the industry. That is another achievement of this Government and of the representatives and supporters of the Government who are now lecturing steel workers, railwaymen and others about the need to make sacrifices.
The pay pause came in July last year just after the gift to Surtax payers, on top of the Rent Act, the increase in National Health contributions and prescription charges, on top of the cutting of support for orange juice for children and for school meals. Every one of those was an imposition on the same class of people, those with lowest incomes, while at the same time gifts were handed out to people at the top who were the likeliest to spend on things which they could do without.
The Ministry of Transport, who has rightly been described as "the villain of the piece", decided very soon after the pay pause to appoint Dr. Beeching to the British Transport Commission with an increase of no less than £240 a week in order to inform railwaymen that the country could not afford to give them a 2½ per cent. increase. I do not know whether Dr. Beeching is worth that sum of money, but it does not make sense


to railwaymen to be told that the national economy is in such a state and everyone has to make sacrifices in spending power when the Minister who is telling them that appoints the head of the Commission with an increase of £240 a week and at the same time, because of the serious financial position of the railways, says there is need to restrict their spending power.
Eleven years of Toryism have brought us to this position. The Surtax boys must not suffer, we are in a serious economic position; therefore, as usual, the workers must suffer. On 26th July last year The Times put it very frankly:
Employers in every private industry in the country will be only too ready to respond to the Government's appeals to keep wages level until productivity rises.
"Only too ready" is the effective phrase in that quotation.
In this situation, what do the Government expect the workers to do? Tributes have been paid to the statesmanship, reasonableness and wisdom of the trade union leaders. These tributes were paid by the hon. Member far Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) and by the Minister, who chided the workers, rightly I think, who have come out on unofficial strike for having taken such unofficial action against the advice and direction of their trade union leaders. He urged them to pay heed to those leaders and to follow their instructions and not the instructions of a lot of wildly irresponsible shop stewards and others.
This is very encouraging, because it is quite likely that as a result of the Government's policy the workers on the railways and elsewhere will be getting official instructions from their trade union leaders for official action, and if we are to take any meaning from the Minister's statement this afternoon, we are encouraged to hope that he will give the workers, Who come out in reply to those official instructions, at least his moral support. That will be a great help.
What alternative have the workers? For years we have tried to persuade them to use the conciliation machinery—sometimes with great difficulty, because some trade unionists have been very suspicious of this conciliation machinery. But after

a great deal of persuasion and practice they have accepted it, and it has been the one safeguard against unnecessary industrial disruption. But what are they to do when the Government of the country denies them the right to use that negotiating machinery or frustrates it when they try to use it? There is only one weapon left—the right to strike. This is a terrible thing to say in the House, but we have always understood that the right to strike was a good, healthy, basic, democratic right which was defended by Tories, Liberals and Socialists—indeed, by everybody in a democratic country. We have always understood that it was a good, healthy, democratic right which was essential to a democratic constitution.
It is the only weapon which is left to the workers if they are to do anything about this situation. I refer not to unofficial strikes, of course, but to official strikes led by the same statesmanlike, wise and tolerant leaders to whom so many tributes have been paid this afternoon, and who have enabled us to come thus far without any breakdown in our economy or any serious industrial trouble. But they will be left with no other alternative if we do not enable them to use the negotiating and conciliation machinery which exists for that purpose.
Having heard the Government's statements and having recalled some of the statements which they made a few months ago when we were faced with another serious situation on the railways, I wonder whether the Government want to avoid a railway strike. One reads the reports in The Times of last year and reads statements which have been made by Ministers up and down the country, and one relates them to the facts and the logic of the situation in which the Government are risking plunging the country into a national railway strike when they themselves say that in two months' time, without knowing what the position will be, they will be able to concede something to the railwaymen. It means that for the sake of two months they are prepared deliberately to allow a situation to develop in which the railwaymen are not allowed to use the ordinary conciliation machinery to avoid having to take the ultimate action. Are the Government, in anticipation of an early General


Election, trying to incite a railway strike in order to try to get for the Government the sympathy of the population?
We in this country have very often, in our foreign affairs debates in particular, attacked Communist practices in other parts of the world where the distribution of incomes is decided by Government edict. We have boasted of our free society, of our free trade unions and of our methods of industrial conciliation. At least in the Communist countries, when incomes are divided according to Government decree, they are divided for everybody, for every section of the population. We may say what we like about the emphasis given to one section or to another, but at least the Government deal with them all. Our Government have taken the worst aspect of the Communist society and have applied it only to one part of the population—those who are least able to bear it. This is what the Tory Government have brought this country to, and this is the kind of thing which, unhappily, we have to debate in the House of Commons today.
The Government can say goodbye to any hopes of the workers co-operating and assisting to get the country out of the economic situation into which the Government have brought us and cooperating in the planning council which has now been set up, which the T.U.C. rightly showed a right deal of hesitation about joining, if they intend to force this issue through as they have threatened to do. The one thing which has prevented trade unions throughout their history from wholehearted co-operation in such joint boards or planning councils has been their suspicion that the dice are loaded against them all the time. If in respect of the railwaymen's claim the Government are to sabotage the operations of the proper negotiating and conciliation machinery, they can say goodbye to any hopes of getting the Trades Union Congress or the trade unions to co-operate on the planning council, because if the planning council is to attract the co-operation of the trade unions and the working people it must be a planning council for all incomes and not just for the incomes of the lowest paid sections of the population.
What we are seeing today is one of the most blatant demonstrations of the

class war which has been seen in this country for many years and which has been waged by the Tory Party.

8.51 p.m.

Mr. David James: Out of deference to the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) I shall speak for only about five minutes, so I will not rise to any of the lovely lures which have been cast across the Floor by hon. Members opposite during the course of the last three hours. Nor do I intend to give way, because I have only a limited time and I want to cover a certain amount of ground.
I believe that this debate got off to a very unfortunate start because the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter), whose sincerity I greatly admire, got his hats muddled up on his way to the Chamber. If he had come here to speak as a railway trade unionist his job—the job for which he is paid—would unquestionably have been to urge at all times for an increase in the pay of railwaymen.

Mr. A. Lewis: My hon. Friend is not paid. He is not like the Tories.

Mr. James: I am sorry. If he had been speaking as a trade unionist, he would have been right to apply his mind to the narrow point of a wage increase for a particular section of the community, but as he was speaking as a statesman from the Opposition Front Bench, if that is not a contradiction in terms, in a debate of major importance, it was important that he should have applied his mind to the wider issues underlying the railway fiasco which arose today.
These wider issues are two-fold. First, we all know that continual wage inflation upsets our balance of payments and could lead to a further devaluation of the £. This was fully recognised by Sir Stafford Cripps from 1947 to 1950. Notwithstanding the fervour and zeal with which he pursued his policies, devaluation occurred, with all its attendant disadvantages to our people.
The second point is that every wage claim which leads to a devaluation of the £ is a straightforward fraud on old-age pensioners. I get sick and tired of people weeping crocodile tears over the plight of the aged and the poor when


they are not prepared to do anything to preserve the purchasing power of their pensions.
The truth is that all of us, so long as we are at work, are, in the naval phrase, "inboard". We all know that sooner or later wages will be made good, relative purchasing powers will be recovered, and so on. But at the moment a man stops working he faces nothing but a continual attrition of his life's savings and his pension by virtue of increased wages all round. This happens from the moment he retires. I do not believe that we shall ever be able to see the continued economic expansion we all want, nor an increase of 100,000 in the number of houses completed each year, nor an increase in the amount we spend on education and all the other good things, until we can increase the gross national product without imperilling our balance of payments owing to inflationary pressures.
I want to make it abundantly plain that I do not blame the unions for this state of affairs, because it is quite obvious that union leaders exist for no other reason than to get the best terms they can for the people who employ them. I very much blame the private sector of industry, which has realised that it is all too easy to give an increase and pass it on to the consumer. Everyone who is in work is still on the merry-go round and it is only the old-age pensioners who suffer.
I was talking only a couple of days ago to a friend of mine who was responsible for a major wage negotiation. I intend to clothe this story, because it would be unfair to refer to an individual. He told me that in the end both sides settled for an extra 12s. I asked him, "Why?" He said, "You know, they are very nice chaps who work for us. We have had a good year and, naturally, we like to carry them along with us, and so we gave a wage increase of this amount." When I asked him whether he had thought of reducing the price of his product, he said, "No, as a matter of fact, we are going to increase it." I said, "Why?" He said, "My dear boy, costs have increased, so have wages." It is a conspiracy, but not, admittedly, an intended conspiracy, between the people who are at work to

devalue the £, but it is the old-age pensioners who have to pay. If any hon. Member opposite is laughing, I hope that he will have an opportunity of controverting this in due course.
The Government, therefore, had to give a lead within that sector of the economy for which they were responsible. I have no doubt about that. If private enterprise was not going to give a lead and industrialists have been too weak-kneed about this, the Government had to do so, and this has taken place in one or two sectors of industry where it is particularly painful. We all have a weak spot for the railwaymen, and everyone dislikes the fact that they who are almost invariably the last, should at the moment be at the thick end of the stick, but the Government had to operate in the sphere for which they bore responsibility. I make no excuse for the Government at last deciding that they would govern.
The hon. Member for Southwark complained of the Government's irresolution, but, if he looks at his speech, he will see that it has been the Government's resolution of which he has been complaining. I would be prepared to censure the Government only if they were to relax any of their efforts and if the Chancellor and the Ministries, which have had to bear the Departmental brunt of the very unpleasant decisions were to relax in protecting the £, in preserving us from devaluation, and so doing something to preserve the purchasing power of the old-age pensioners.

8.56 p.m.

Mr. George Brown: I always knew that there was a very strong argument against Eton and Balliol, and now I know what it is. I have listened with interest to what the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. James) had to say. I can only say that from my point of view he is completely out of touch with what is going on in the world outside. While I am sure that he believes every single word he said, I believe that a great many people in Kemptown, when they read his speech as I hope they will, will find it very difficult to understand why he believes it.

Mr. James: I hope that the right hon Gentleman will realise that in limiting


myself to five minutes instead of fifteen, in deference to him, I had to leave out quite a lot of balancing points which I should like to have mentioned.

Mr. Brown: If the hon. Member had spoken for more than fifteen minutes it would have been even worse for the electors of Kemptown. They are lucky to have got away with five.
The background of this debate, which no hon. Member opposite has mentioned, from the Minister of Labour right the way through to the hon. Member for Kemptown, is the continually reiterated plea that Tory freedom has failed, that after eleven years of rule by Ministers opposite, some still in power, some who have failed and some who have come from the back benches, like the right hon. Member the Chanceller of the Duchy of Lancaster, they have, between them, now reached a situation where the country is in grievous trouble and we have to restrict, to hold back, to direct and to control.
It used to be said that the difference between them and us was that we were for direction and control and they were for freedom. Clearly, today this is no longer true. They are for direction and control, but they are for directing and controlling the people at the lower end of the income scale, whereas we are for directions and controls where they have to do with the national interest. That is the background to the story.
We opened with a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter)—the borough in which I was born and where I am proud to be represented by him—which must have impressed all those who heard it. It was a speech of power, sincerity and responsibility. It did not seek to make party points. I am sure that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is to follow, will accept that.
My hon. Friend was followed by the Minister of Labour. Here, I speak as one who served his time as a P.P.S. in the Ministry of Labour. I should think that everybody who heard the right hon. Gentleman will agree that his speech fell far below the events that we are discussing, and far below the level of my hon. Friend's speech. It was a speech that never once recognised the issues and the problems, a speech which

had in it many elements of sheer humbug—things which nobody in the Ministry of Labour would have written for him.
The people in the Ministry of Labour who now handle industrial relations were serving their time in similar posts to mine when I was serving my time there. They never wrote that brief. What the Minister of Labour was reading was a Treasury brief, in which he himself did not believe, and I wish that he had had the guts to refuse to read it.

Mr. Hare: I do not mind insults, but I do object to the accusation that I have not got guts.

Mr. Brown: If the right hon. Gentleman has them, they were not on parade today.
Let us be clear about the background to this debate. While we were debating, hundreds of thousands of people were sitting in buses and cars, were walking, were frustrated, irritated and angry and were kept from their useful occupations. They were kept from producing. Factories and offices were short of people who ought to have been in them. People were advised to come to work late. It took me nearly two hours to complete a quarter of an hour's journey to get here this morning, and I did not leave as early as most people left. They were advised to leave early to get home. So the background is one of industry kept short; of people, irritated, angry and bitter.
None of these is due to an industrial conflict. None of these is due to a conflict between a worker and an employer. All of this bitterness is due to deliberate action by the Government superseding industrial negotiations and problems. The Government must understand that this is not a charade. It is not one of those debates where there is a party line. This debate concerns many of us who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark said, after the Mond-Turner talks and the crisis which preceded them, devoted our lives to building up decent negotiating arrangements and decent human relations in industry. We feel really angry that we are in the situation in which we find ourselves today because the Government decided to butt in, to upset everybody and to upset all the arrangements


purely for political reasons which had nothing to do with industrial relations.
The Minister of Labour was asked many questions while he was speaking. The evasions to which he had to resort to get out of the trouble that he was in seemed to me, and I think to all of his hon. Friends, a tragic business. I could go through what he had to say about the Railway Staff National Tribunal. It was pathetic; it was a pity; it was a tragedy. He tried to deny that the Government had interfered in arbitration. He tried to show that arbitrators were still free. He tried to show that the Ministry of Labour still cared about industrial negotiations. It really was pathetic.
The real trouble in this Ministerial setup is that one is hunting the wrong fox. The Minister of Labour, the Postmaster-General and the Minister of Transport, who has not bothered to come back into the Chamber, are not Ministers in the sense that we understand Ministers. They are not men responsible for what they do. They are men directed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ernest Bevin, George Isaacs, or any of the Ministers of Labour since 1945 would not have stood for this from any Chancellor of the Exchequer. The tragedy is that this Minister of Labour stands for it from the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is not a very great Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is a good measure of the difference.
The first mistake that the Government made was last year, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer suddenly decided, I think quite rightly, that after ten years Tory economic doctrines had failed. He decided, with a good Leninist-Marxist background, that a new economic policy was required. At that stage, the obviously sensible thing to do was to consult not only politicians, but the British Employers' Confederation and the T.U.C. The extraordinary thing is that he consulted neither body. It was not only the T.U.C. which complained that he did not consult it. He did not consult the B.E.C., either. He acted like a rogue elephant. [An HON. MEMBER: "Elephant?"] Perhaps "elephant" is putting it a bit high, but I want to be polite.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer started thrashing about him. I see that his other "Parliamentary Secretary", the Minister of Transport, has arrived. As I say, the right hon. and learned Gentleman began thrashing about him without consulting anybody. Then he began to make his really tragic decisions. They were tragic. They were tragic in their consequences. He began to break firm agreements. The Minister of Labour today tried to pretend—the Leader of the House, who was the previous Minister of Labour, ought to face this, too—that firm agreements have not been broken. This is absolute rubbish. It is quite untrue.
Firm agreements that had been entered into were broken. One of them was with the Post Office engineers. The Postmaster-General had signed the terms of reference to arbitration. Then he permitted himself to be misused by the Chancellor and to say that those terms could not be applied and that the arbitrators must not operate on those terms. In those terms, he had given the date that could be the operative date. Subsequently, after signing those terms, he said that it could not be the operative date, but that it had to be later because of the Government decision. That was the breaking of a firm agreement.
The men in my union, who are called the M-rate men, had a firm agreement signed by both sides, but the Chancellor said that it had to be broken, and broken it was. The Admiralty industrial workers had a firm agreement, but it was broken on instructions from the Chancellor.
Not only were agreements broken. Negotiating machinery was interfered with. Today, the Minister of Labour took refuge in arguments, of which tomorrow he will feel ashamed, that these were not interferences but that the negotiating bodies were still free. This simply is not true. The postmen were not left free. The Postmaster-General is still, apparently, unwilling to say that he will meet the union, sit down and negotiate the problem. The reason he cannot say that is that he is not free to say it. He is not left free to do it.
The Minister of Transport cannot let Dr. Beeching sit down with the railway unions, because he is not free to let Dr. Beeching do so. The fact is that if Dr. Beeching sat down with the unions to


get the workers' co-operation in a great programme, he might be willing to make an agreement. And so the Minister of Transport, acting as the puppet for Charlie McCarthy, steps in and says that Dr. Beeching may not do it.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): Charlie McCarthy is the puppet.

Mr. Brown: If the Minister is Charlie McCarthy, the Chancellor is Edgar Bergen. But it does not matter which is Charlie McCarthy and which is Edgar Bergen. The result for the workers is the same.
The point is that a puppet is acting in the case of the railwaymen and says, "You may not have it." A puppet is acting in the case of the postmen and a puppet is acting in the case of the Post Office engineers. In every case, long-built-up negotiating machinery that ought to operate is prevented from operating.
When Government speakers say, as they have been saying today, that people should not go on strike and should not do these things that have caused the chaos today, as an honest, blunt man I simply ask: what do they expect to happen? [HON. MEMBERS: "Tell us?"] I did not learn my debating in a union debating society. I will say exactly what I think.
There are only three things that workers can do. They can negotiate, they can arbitrate, or they can fight. Ministers stopped them negotiating. They stopped them arbitrating. What, then, do they expect them to do? There is only a third alternative.
For all the lifetime of the Post Office the Union of Post Office workers has never been forced to do what it has been forced to do now. Never.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Reginald Bevins): I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to me, but he might at least respect the truth.

Mr. James Callaghan: Does the Postmaster-General deny it?

Mr. Bevins: I have negotiated with the Union of Post Office Workers for six months. Our negotiations broke down.
I then invited the union to go to arbitration. It has refused all along to go to arbitration.

Mr. Brown: What the right hon. Gentleman offered were negotiations of his choosing, on his terms of reference. What he refused, and what today he is still refusing, are negotiations on free terms of reference between the two of them. It is no good the right hon. Gentleman waving his hand. I put this question to him. Will the Postmaster-General meet the U.P.W. tomorrow and discuss how the claim can be dealt with? Will he?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Bevins: That is perfectly easily answered. The answer is yes, provided the union calls off industrial strife and the negotiations are free on both sides.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Brown: And free on both sides means that there is no limit to the increase which they might get and there is no pre-fixed date. Does it mean that? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] Does it mean that?

Mr. Bevins: I should have thought it had been made perfectly clear by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."]—and by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour that any agreed figure would be post-pause.

Mr. Brown: Hon. Members opposite cheered when the Postmaster-General said that it was free on both sides. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite: is it free on both sides? Is it? The Postmaster-General has now said it cannot be till after the wage pause is ended. What is free about that? He is still Charlie McCarthy, and this is the problem: there are no negotiating positions left open, and there are no arbitrating positions left open.
I understand that the Prime Minister is very involved in this matter. I hope that he will listen to this, because I imagine that in the end, if one looks for the real Edgar Bergen, one finds him there, and one would like to make one's arguments apply to him.
It is not only negotiations which are not any longer free, but arbitrators are still instructed. I listened today to the


Minister of Labour trying to make it apparent that arbitrators were not instructed. But they are. Even from here on they will not be free. This is the first time I know of in our industrial relations history that the Government have hampered, tied and directed arbitration.
We are one of the countries in the world now which has directed arbitrators, and it is not much use the Prime Minister prattling away in fireside chats about democracy. When I was in the dictatorship countries I always told them, and when the Stalinist rule still was running—in Poland, and some of my hon. Friends were with me at the time; and I said it in Spain—that one of the differences between them and us was that we had free negotiating and arbitrating machinery.
Nobody could go to an Iron Curtain country and say that today, because the only arbitrating machinery we can have, as the Postmaster-General has made perfectly plain, is arbitrating machinery limited by the conditions laid down by the Government. We have ceased to be, in industrial terms, a free democracy. This country has become under this Government, for the very first time, a place where it can be said by any enemy of democracy that we, too, are directed by the Government as to what can be done, what can be awarded, and how and when.
The really pathetic thing about it is that it has been done by Ministers who do not know what they are doing. I even doubt whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows what he is doing. He is destroying something that took a great deal of building up, something of immense value. Why are the white collar workers, the civil servants, postmen and Admiralty servants now in the forefront of the claim, and why are teachers in the front of the industrial battle? These are most unlikely people to have in the front. It is the Government who have brought it about, and they have brought it about because they have interfered with and broken up negotiating machinery. They have prevented free arbitration in the areas where they thought they could get away with it, and with the people with whom they thought they could get away with

it, and—does the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) wish to say something?

Sir S. Summers: I was only laughing at the number of "withs".

Mr. Brown: That is the sort of snobbish thing that the hon. Member would do. The argument is not about whether I speak grammatically, but about the industrial damage that the hon. Member's right hon. Friends are doing. If they ever got that into their heads they might make some progress.
Let us be clear about this situation. The railwaymen are not allowed to negotiate in case their employers make them an offer. The civil servants are not allowed to have free arbitration in case the arbitrators make the award restrospective. The Postmaster-General cannot negotiate with the U.P.W. because he is not allowed to discuss all the terms that the Post Office workers want to raise with him. The Post Office engineers are not allowed to have their case because they have been already given an award by the arbitrators and the Postmaster-General is not allowed to grant it. The Admiralty men are not allowed to have their award by arbitration because the Chancellor says that they must not have it. The lower-grade men are not allowed to have what they have been allowed by arbitration because the Chancellor says that they cannot be granted it.
This is what has caused the chaos outside the House today and this is what has made people bitter and angry. The Government have done this. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I understood that the case was not that they had not done it. I understood that the case was that they had done it for good reasons. That was what the Minister of Labour said—not that they had not done it, but that their reason for doing it was good.
What was the reason? It was that incomes must match production. On one occasion the Minister said "production" and on another "productivity". I gather that the point is that we must not be taking in our incomes more than we are earning by our production. Is that the case? I see the Minister nodding. But what do the landlords produce? They have had enormous increases granted to


them by the Government. Indeed, the Government have passed Bills to give them more money. What are the landlords producing? What are the take-over kings producing? What is Mr. Clore producing to justify his increased income? There are many others like him.

Mr. David Webster: Mr. Charles Clore is the proprietor of one of the few British shipyards with a full order book today and with fully employed workpeople. That is one thing that he is producing.

Mr. Brown: I am talking about takeover bids and the making of capital gains which are not taxed, but which mean an enormous increase in income. What is the production against which that sort of thing is to be set?

Mr. Charles Doughty: rose—

Mr. Brown: If the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to intervene, it will come out of the Minister's time.

Mr. Doughty: Surely Mr. Clore's takeovers and business of that kind are subject to tax in every direction?

Mr. Brown: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman telling me that no capital gains arise out of these transactions? If he is not saying that, I do not know why he has taken time out of the Minister's period for reply. That is the whole point of my case, that capital gains are not taxed and are not set against production.
One can even go on from this if production has to rise to justify incomes rising. A very large number of friends of the Conservative Party are getting increased incomes, but are not contributing in increased production. I will go even further than that. Production generally is not rising. Why? Is it because ordinary workers do not work hard enough? That is rubbish. Our people do not decide the rate at which the machines turn. It is the Chancellor, by his credit squeeze, his high-interest rate policy and his deflationary policy, who decides at what rate industry turns.
When the Minister of Labour spoke today about profits and dividends—he was so unsure of himself that he could not answer a subsequent question—he

could have gone further. It is true that profits were rising at a very much lower rate at the end of the year, but that was because production had fallen at the end of the year. But dividends were still rising, which meant that firms were paying out what they were not earning. The point is that production had fallen, and that was because of Government policy and the Chancellor's economic and financial policy.
It is absolute rubbish to blame this on lowly paid public servants, on the most dedicated men, those in Government service, in transport, in hospitals, in schools and other places. All this is due to the Government's own economic and financial policy. If they changed it, then we could raise production again. We shall not do it by picking a row with people who are already living on incomes which are not much more than, and in many cases are a good deal less than, £10 a week.
I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite understand what they are doing. Some of the men on whom we are picking in this policy have a weekly wage of less than £9 a week. Do not let us "kid" ourselves that we are dealing here with men with large incomes. We are dealing with the lowest-paid and most defenceless of all the people, and if hon. Gentlemen opposite think that we are unfair when we mention Mr. Clore they should remember the hundreds of thousands of people, for whom we have some responsibility, whose wages are such that none of us would even consider living on them at all.
We do not say that there is not a problem here. Obviously, there is, and we press this House to deal with it. Had the Government begun by setting up an effective planning authority, had they been willing to control where controls were obviously required, had they been willing to deal with price margins where there was plenty of slack to be taken up, had they been willing to end the land racket, had they been willing to consult with the T.U.C. and the British Employers' Confederation, had they been willing to have a fair taxation policy instead of making great hand-outs to Surtax payers while pressing everybody else, had they been willing to have a capital gains tax, had they been willing to end the credit squeeze in the unselective way they have done it, had they


been willing to do all that in that sort of order, we might well have had the answer to the problem that faces us today.
My challenge to the Government is that they end this unfair business of taking it out of the little people with small incomes while letting others get away with it, that they recognise that they are responsible for the chaos that we saw in London today, and that they either adopt the sort of policy to which I have referred or get out and make way for a Government that will.

9.33 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): This is the fourth debate we have had since 25th July last year, and each of them has stemmed from what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said then. In each of them, using slightly different words in the Motions which they put before the House, the Opposition have sought to show the policy of that date, and, for that matter, the policies of today, to be unfair, arbitrary and irrelevant. Equally, those who have been the spokesmen for the Government have tried to show these policies to be in the national interest.
This is still the argument that we are having today, but the argument itself is entering a slightly new phase because of two factors, and I will come to both of these as I try to answer this debate.
First, is the announcement made today that phase one of the pause is to end on 31st March, and second is the decision, which I am sure we all welcome, of the T.U.C. to join the National Economic Development Council. Most of the debate has been taken up with the Civil Service, and the railways, and about the wider problem of industrial relations and how we are to secure better human relations today. I take straight away a good text on that from the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Gunter), who opened the debate, who said, if I got his words aright, that good human relations is a matter of good business. So it is. I am certain that, however much we may differ today, there is profound truth in that.
Before I turn to these big subjects, I would like to say a few words about the

speech of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Padley), who dealt with an immensely important part of our wages system, the wages councils system, which affects no fewer than 3½ million workers, something we are apt to forget. He put one or two points to me with which I should like to deal straight away, because, however important they are, to some extent they are a side stream from the main river of the debate.
I am sure that he agrees with me that under the tripartite method, which both he and I in different spheres know so well the wages councils system works very well indeed. However, he did not tell the whole of the story when he referred to the Laundry Workers' Wages Council. For instance, he said that my noble Friend Lord Monckton referred back wages councils orders. So he did, but we should also remember that so did George Isaacs. George Isaacs did it for the same reason, referring to the speeches and exhortations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. What Ministers of Labour do in this respect does not differ because they are Tory or Socialist Ministers of Labour, nor because the exhortations which they put before the wages councils have been produced by Tory or Socialist Chancellors of the Exchequer.
The other point which he made a little inadequately was when he dealt with the level of wages. The facts are that the average earnings for men in the laundry industry are £5 a week above the minimum, to which he referred most of the time, while those for women are £1 a week above the minimum.

Mr. Padley: It will be within the memory of the House that I also said that at the time the negotiations took place 22 per cent. of the adult males in the industry were receiving less than £10 a week and 45 per cent. of the women less than £6 a week and that averages therefore settled nothing.

Mr. Macleod: All the same, it is only by giving averages for earnings as well as wage rates that we can get the picture. The hon. Member's main question, which was very important and which I would like to answer categorically was this he said that even as we entered phase two, on the doctrine which the Minister of Labour had applied in recent months following the statements on 25th July


and action on subsequent wages councils orders, the Minister of Labour might still put off from week to week and month to month the effective date of the wages councils awards. I will tell him—because more than anyone else in the House he is concerned with the matter—that as we enter phase two, from 1st April, wages councils orders will be made in the normal course. I hope that that answers his question. As I am seeking to show and as we have showed throughout, this phase of Government policy should come to an end at the end of March.
I now turn to a discussion of the question of arbitration in the Civil Service. I recall two sentences from what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said on 25th July:
…a pause is essential as a basis for continued prosperity and growth. In those areas for which the Government have direct responsibility we shall act in accordance with this policy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th July. 1961; Vol. 645, c. 223.]
From those two sentences flows everything that has happened. [Interruption.] Yes, indeed. I admit straight away—I have no wish to disguise this at all—that the Government's action in relation to the Civil Service was, of course, an interference with the ordinary procedure. It would be quite wrong of me to attempt to disguise that for a moment. That is not the question.
The real question is whether or not there were grounds of public policy on which it was right for us to take this action. That is the point. Immediately after the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made his statement, he saw the leaders of the Civil Service unions and explained how the pause would be applied. He said that the commitments already entered into would be met. Where a firm offer had been made the Government would stand by the offer and any operative date attached to it; and negotiations proceeding or about to start on the "first sound" of the post-Priestley surveys by the Pay Research Unit would continue.
The House, of course, can and does and is debating criticisms of the original policy, but all I am concerned with for the moment is to show the arguments about the date, and the question of whether this is or is not the right thing

to do flow inescapably from the major decision of Government policy. For the rest, the Government would need to ensure that during the pause there were no increases of pay in the Civil Service.
The hon. Member for Southwark said, I think, that he would have felt it to be more straightforward—I do not know if I am using his exact words—if we had been bold enough to withdraw arbitration altogether. But, with respect to him, that is a false view, because it is laid down with absolute clarity in paragraph 95 of "Staff Relations in the Civil Service" that
…the Government must also reserve to itself the right to refuse arbitration on grounds of policy'; because the Government is responsible to Parliament for the administration of the public service and cannot relieve itself of that responsibility or share it with any other persons or organisations.
That is the position.

Mr. Gunter: I must make this clear. I was referring to the railway dispute. I said that I would have had far more respect for the Government if they had boldly and clearly said that, in view of the economic crisis, they were now prepared to breach the agreements instead of evading the issue by saying that they were only advising the British Transport Commission.

Mr. Macleod: I shall come to that point about the railways directly.

Mr. W. R. Williams: I suppose the House will concede that one of the biggest emergencies we have had in recent times was from 1939 to 1945. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether any Government during that period exercised this so-called right?

Mr. Macleod: I do not know whether there are particular examples in that period. My impression is that there were. But I am not entirely sure about that. [An HON. MEMBER:" The right hon. Gentleman does not know."] On the contrary, I do know now. I have just found out. Paragraph 98 says:
It is not unknown for the Government to go to arbitration; during the war the Official Side took the National Staff side to arbitration on a claim for revised compensation for Sunday duty.


The point of Government policy in these matters is, of course, simply this: it would have been possible to have withdrawn arbitration altogether. Paragraph 95 makes it, quite clear that that can be done and that that right is reserved to the Government. But we did not wish do to that. We thought it right to impose this period of the pause, and from that followed the exclusion of the date from arbitration and also the question of the agreement in relation to terms of reference. So it seems to me abundantly clear that what was done in relation to the Civil Service—although I have conceded that it was an interference with the ordinary processes of negotiation—falls within the discretion inevitably kept to Governments and especially relevant to them by paragraph 95 which I have quoted.
I turn, as I promised I would do, to the question of the railways which, perhaps more than any other, has been the subject of questions throughout this discussion. The unions at their meeting today agreed to seek a meeting with Dr. Beeching later this week, and I have no later information than that to give to the House. I wish to take up the question of whether or not it was right for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to issue his letter—hon. Members may call it a "request" or "directive", whichever they wish for the purposes of this argument—to the Transport Commission. It seems to me, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) that it would have been unthinkable and utterly wrong for the Government to have stood aside and not let their views be known on this most important matter.
My right hon. and hon. Friends have made clear why that is so. If I may summarise them there are three reasons. First of all, the deficit on the railways, which in 1961 exceeded £140 million. Secondly, the Government's policy—I agree under fierce attack—that increases in income should, so far as one can do it, be brought into realistic relationship with increases in the national output. And thirdly, the Government's recognition that there are special factors—the letter points straight to these—which warrant some limited increase in railway wages.
I cannot believe that it would have been right for my right hon. Friend to have let the negotiations proceed without making the Government's view on this important matter crystal clear—

Mr. Collick: rose—

Mr. Macleod: I wish to develop my argument for a few sentences more, and then I will give way.
The next question was, at what time should this point of view be made known? Because, of course, the final stage is arbitration and the preceding stage is discussion in the Railway Staffs National Council. The Council was to meet on 23rd January, having had a meeting, I think, exactly two months before, on 23rd November. I have no doubt at all that had my right hon. Friend put forward his view as early as 23rd November he would have been even more bitterly criticised than he has been for putting it forward now. Nor can I think that any particular time in between those dates would have been regarded as appropriate. Therefore, the point is—this is the argument which I am putting to the House—if it be right—I claim that it is—for a Government to make their views clear on this matter, then I am certain that my right hon. Friend was right to put this before the meeting on 23rd January on the latest possible date.

Mr. Collick: Will the Minister please reply to the question which I raised in the debate? If it be right for the Chairman of the Coal Board to have the freedom to negotiate wages, why is it wrong for that same freedom to be given to the Chairman of the Transport Commission?

Mr. Macleod: Largely because of the difference in relation to the very first point that I put to the House of the deficit in regard to the railways. Certainly [Interruption.] We take the view that the date which I have mentioned, which is to say the end of the financial year or 1st April, 1962, is right for two reasons; first, because that date is compatible with the policy we have followed throughout and the date which we have announced for a possible end to the pay pause; and secondly, that the Government are not prepared to place a further burden on the taxpayer in the


current financial year in view of the present size of the British Transport Commission's deficit.
It has been asked on so many occasions that I think I should reply to it, would the Government accept the results of arbitration? The answer is that the results are not binding on the parties and the parties are the Commission and the unions. The Government themselves are not a party to an arbitration which I hope will take place—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—I am answering the question quite straightforwardly—and the Government cannot commit themselves in advance without knowing what the attitude of the parties is to any award.

Mr. Gunter: If the trade unions and the British Transport Commission agree to accept the findings, will the Government then accept them?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Macleod: I have no intention of committing myself in advance—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—any more than the hon. Member for Southwark will commit himself about the unions accepting them.

Mr. Gunter: rose—

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We must have less noise. It is becoming difficult to hear.

Mr. Gunter: I am entitled to ask that question for this reason. We are being directed to arbitration. We are not asking to go to arbitration. Let it be perfectly clear to the House, we are not in dispute with the B.T.C. They have told us in their own words that they are not declining our claim. We are not in dispute and do not want to go to arbitration. The burden is on the Government.

Mr. Macleod: The hon. Member for Southwark knows perfectly well, because he knows these positions perfectly well—

Mr. Manuel: Better than the right hon. Gentleman does.

Mr. Macleod: —of course, better than I do—that the unions have often not accepted arbitration. He knows perfectly well that he is reserving his position, and so am I.
I have been asked a number of questions about the second phase, what sort of period the Government have in mind, what sort of exemptions they have in mind and how they intend to make their policies more clearly known in these matters. I shall briefly reply to these points.
The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) asked how long. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor said in the debate on 18th December that although it is bound to take many months to evolve a long-term national incomes policy, the Government's aim is to get ahead with this as fast as they can. We now have the N.E.D.C. set up and one might reasonably hope to have results in something like twelve months' time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil said that he hoped these matters would be explained as clearly as possible to the country. I take that point. We have been discussing how best this can be done, and without attempting to cover the whole of the possibilities in the last few minutes which remain to me, perhaps I may say that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor proposes to lay a White Paper on these matters before the House explaining in as much detail as we can the position and the development of phase two.
I want to take as the text for the last thing which I shall say something which was said by the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) about strikes and about industrial relations generally. He thought that I was disagreeing with him about strikes. On the contrary, I have said from this Box many times—and the House will remember this—that the effect of strikes on our economy is greatly exaggerated in this country.

Mr. Dan Jones: That is why you do not mind promoting them.

Mr. Macleod: The amount of time per working man lost in this country per year comes to about one hour. It is just as well to keep that figure in perspective when we remember how generally good industrial relations are throughout the whole of the country. We have a better record in this country than almost every other industrial country—under both Governments, of course, and over the years. Naturally I am


proud of this. I was Minister of Labour for four year, and I am deeply proud of it.

Mr. Manuel: Then why sully it?

Mr. Macleod: The right hon. Member for Belper commented, "Up till now". With respect, these charges have been part of the stock in trade of the Labour Party for the whole of the ten or eleven years that we have been in office. Exactly the same charges were made against my noble Friend Lord Monckton in 1952. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes. I will quote. Lord Robens said then of his action in relation to wages councils that it might be a turning point in the relations between the trade union movement and the Government and that in any case it was likely to bedevil relations between the Ministry of Labour and the trade unions.
We have heard that every year since. It was said to me when I decided to abandon the system of compulsory arbitration. It was said with great firmness by the hon. Member for Southwark in the last debate, when he said to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour,

"Therefore, many of us feel that the Ministry of Labour has lost a lot of the honour that it held in the minds of prominent trade unionists over the past few years".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th December, 1961; Vol. 651, c. 1060.]

They have said this for ten years, and we still have a fine record of freedom from strikes, and we still have a splendid record of high employment in this country.

It is in the national and not in a party interest that this situation should continue, and it is in the national and not in a party interest that industry and the Government should sit together in the N.E.D.C. The great question ever since 25th July has been this: were the measures introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend in the national interest or were they not? At the end of four debates, I claim that everything which has been said ever since shows that we were right and that we are right now.

Question put:—
That this House deplores the damage done to industrial relations consequent upon the interference by Her Majesty's Government with the established forms of negotiation and the freedom of arbitration courts to arrive at unfettered decisions.

The House divided: Ayes 229, Noes 315.

Division No. 47.]
AYES
[9.59 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)


Ainsley, William
Deer, George
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)


Albu, Austen
Delargy, Hugh
Hamilton, William (west Fife)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Dempsey, James
Hannan, William


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Diamond, John
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Baxter, William (Stirlingshire, W.)
Dodos, Norman
Hayman, F. H.


Beaney, Alan
Donnelly, Desmond
Healey, Denis


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Driberg, Tom
Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur(RwlyRegis)


Bence. Cyril
Ede, Rt. Hon. C.
Herbison, Miss Margaret


Bennett, J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Edelman, Maurice
Hewitson, Capt. M.


Benson, Sir George
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Hill, J. (Midlothian)


Blackburn, F.
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hilton, A. V.


Blyton, William
Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
Holman, Percy


Boardman, H.
Evans, Albert
Holt, Arthur


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics. S. W.)
Fernyhough, E.
Howell, Charles A. (Perry Barr)


Bowles, Frank
Finch, Harold
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Boyden, James
Fitch, Alan
Hoy, James H.


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Fletcher, Eric
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Brockway, A. Fenner
Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Forman, J. G.
Hunter, A. E.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Galpern, Sir Myer
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)


Callaghan, James
George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Crmrthn)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Castle, Mrs. Barbara
Ginsburg, David
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)


Cliffe, Michael
Gooch, E. C.
Janner, Sir Barnett


Collick, Percy
Gordon walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Gourlay, Harry
Jeger, George


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Greenwood, Anthony
Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)


Cronin, John
Grey, Charles
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)


Crosland, Anthony
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech(Wakefield)


Darling, George
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Davies. G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Griffiths, W. (Exchange)
Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Grimond, Rt. Hon. J.
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)



Gunter, Ray





Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip(Derby, S.)
Stonehouse, John


Kelley, Richard
Oram, A. E.
Stones, William


Kenyan, Clifford
Oswald, Thomas
Strachey, Rt. Hon. John


Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Owen, Will
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)


King, Dr. Horace
Padley, W. E.
Stross, Dr. Barnett (Stoke-on-Trent, C.)


Lawson, George
Paget, R. T.
Swain, Thomas


Ledger, Ron
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Swingler, Stephen


Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Pargiter, C. A.
Symonds, J. B.


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Parker John
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Parkin, B. T.
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Pavitt, Laurence
Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)


Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)


Lipton, Marcus
Peart, Frederick
Thornton, Ernest


Loughlin, Charles
Pentland, Norman
Thorpe, Jeremy


Mabon, Dr. J, Dickson
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Timmons, John


McCann, John
Prentice, R. E.
Tomney, Frank


MacColl, James
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn


McInnes, James
Probert, Arthur
Wade, Donald


McKay, John (Wallsend)
Proctor, W. T.
Wainwright, Edwin


Mackie, John (Enfield, East)
Randall, Harry
Warbey, William


McLeavy, Frank
Rankin, John
Watkins, Tudor


MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)
Redhead, E. C.
Weitzman, David


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Reid, William
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Mahon, Simon
Reynolds, G. W.
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Rhodes, H.
White, Mrs. Eirene


Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Whitlock, William


Manuel, A. C.
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Wigg, George


Mapp, Charles
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Wilkins, W. A.


Marsh, Richard
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Willey, Frederick


Mason, Roy
Ross, William
Williams, D. J. (Neath)


Mayhew, Christopher
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Williams, LI. (Abertillery)


Mellish, R. J.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Mendelson, J. J.
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Millan, Bruce
Skeffington, Arthur
Willis, E. C. (Edinburgh, E.)


Milne, Edward
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Mitchison, G. R.
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)
Winterbottom, R. E.


Monslow, Walter
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Moody, A. S.
Snow, Julian
Woof, Robert


Morris, John
Sorensen, R. W.
Wyatt, Woodrow


Moyle, Arthur
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Mulley, Frederick
Spriggs, Leslie
Zilliacus, K.


Neal, Harold
Steele, Thomas
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Short




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Bryan, Paul
Digby, Simon Wingfield


Aitken, W. T.
Buck, Antony
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Bullard, Denys
Doughty, Charles


Allason, James
Bullus, Wing Commander Erie
Drayson, G. B.


Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian
Burden, F. A.
du Cann, Edward


Ashton, Sir Hubert
Butcher, Sir Herbert
Duthie, Sir William


Atkins, Humphrey
Butler, Rt. Hn. R.A. (Saffron Walden)
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David


Balniel, Lord
Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Eden, John


Barber, Anthony
Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Elliot, Capt- Walter (Carshalton)


Barlow, Sir John
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)
Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.


Barter, John
Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Farey-Jones, F. W.


Batsford, Brian
Carr, Sir Robert
Farr, John


Baxter, Sir Beverley (Southgate)
Channon, H. P. G.
Finlay, Graeme


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Chataway, Christopher
Fisher, Nigel


Bell, Ronald
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Forrest, George


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Cleaver, Leonard
Foster, John


Berkeley, Humphrey
Cole, Norman
Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford &amp; Stone)


Bevins, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Collard, Richard
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)


Bidgood, John C.
Cooke, Robert
Freeth, Denzil


Biffen, John
Cooper, A. E.
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.


Biggs-Davison, John
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Gammans, Lady


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Corfield, F. V.
Gardner, Edward


Bishop, F. P.
Costain, A. P.
Gibson-Watt, David


Black, Sir Cyril
Coulson, Michael
Gilmour, Sir John


Bossom, Clive
Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Glyn, sir Richard (Dorset, N.)


Bourne-Arton, A.
Craddock, Sir Beresford
Godber, J. B.


Box, Donald
Critchley, Julian
Goodhart, Phlip


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J.
Crosthwaite-Eyre,-Col. Sir Oliver
Goodhew, Victor


Boyle, Sir Edward
Crowder, F. P.
Gough, Frederick


Braine, Bernard
Curran, Charles
Gower, Raymond


Brewis, John
Currie, G. B. H.
Grant, Rt. Hon. William


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Dalkeith, Earl of
Grant-Ferris, Wg. Cdr. R.


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Dance, James
Green, Alan


Brooman-White, R.
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Gresham Cooke, R.


Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Deedee, W. F.
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
de Ferranti, Basil
Gurden, Harold







Hall, John (Wycombe)
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Russell, Ronald


Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
MacLeod, John (Ross &amp; Cromarty)
Scott-Hopkins, James


Hare, Rt. Hon. John
McMaster, Stanley R.
Seymour, Leslie


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N-W.)
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)
Sharpies, Richard


Harris, Reader (Heston)
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Shaw, M.


Harrison, Brian (Maidon)
Maddan, Martin
Shepherd, Willam


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Maginnis, John E.
Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn


Harvey, sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Maitland, Sir John
Skeet, T. H. H.


Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Harvie Anderson, Miss
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)


Hastings, Stephen
Marlowe, Anthony
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Hay, John
Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Marshall, Douglas
Speir, Rupert


Hendry, Forbes
Marten, Neil
Stanley, Hon. Richard


Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Mathew, Robert (Honiton)
Stevens, Geoffrey


Hiley, Joseph
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Stodart, J. A.


Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)
Mawby, Ray
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Storey, Sir Samuel


Hirst, Geoffrey
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Studholme, Sir Henry


Hobson, John
Mills, Stratton
Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)


Hocking, Philip N.
Montgomery, Fergus
Talbot, John E.


Holland, Philip
More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Tapsell, Peter


Hollingworth, John
Morgan, William
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Hopkins, Alan
Morrison, John
Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)


Hornby, R. P.
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)


Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Nabarro, Gerald
Temple, John M.


Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John
Neave, Airey
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret


Hughes-Young, Michael
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Hulbert, Sir Norman
Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard
Thomas, Peter (Conway)


Hutchison, Michael Clark
Oakshott, sir Hendrie
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Iremonger, T. L.
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.}


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter


Jackson, John
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


James, David
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Page, John (Harrow, West)
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Touche, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)
Turner, Colin


Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Partridge, E.
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Joseph, Sir Keith
Percival, Ian
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Kaberry, Sir Donald
Peyton, John
Vane, W. M. F.


Kerans, Cdr. J. S.
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Kerby, Capt. Henry
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Vickers, Miss Joan


Kerr, Sir Hamilton
Pilkington, Sir Richard
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Kershaw, Anthony
Pitman, Sir James
Walder, David


Kirk, Peter
Pitt, Miss Edth
Walker, Peter


Kitson, Timothy
Pott, Percivall
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek


Lagden, Godfrey
Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch
Wall, Patrick


Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold


Langford-Holt, Sir John
Price, H. A. (Lewisham, w.)
Webster, David


Leavey, J. A.
Prior, J. M. L.
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Leburn, Gilmour
Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho
Whitelaw, William


Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Profumo, Rt. Hon. John
Williams, Dudley (Exeter)


Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Lilley, F. J. P.
Pym, Francis
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Linstead, Sir Hugh
Ramsden, James
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Litchfield, Capt. John
Rawlinson, Peter
Wise, A. R.


Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'Idfield)
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Rees, Hugh
Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard


Longbottom, Charles
Rees-Davies, w. R.
Woodhouse, C. M.


Longden, Gilbert
Renton, David
Woodnutt, Mark


Loveys, Walter H.
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Woollam, John


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn
Ridsdale, Julian
Worsley, Marcus


Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Rippon, Geoffrey
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


MacArthur, Ian
Robinson, Rt Hn Sir R. (B'pool, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


McLaren, Martin
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Mr. Edward Wakefield and


Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Roots, William
Mr. Chichester-Clark.


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Bute &amp; N. Ayrs.)
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard




Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)

Orders of the Day — CLEAN AIR

10.11 p.m.

Dr. Barnett Stross: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Alkali, &amp;c. Works Order, 1961 (S.I., 1961, No. 2261), dated 23rd November, 1961, a copy of which was laid before this House on 28th November, be annulled.
The effect of this Order is to extend the list of offensive and noxious gases which are mentioned in the original Act of 1906, and, of course, also the works from which they are emitted. The gases are listed in the First Schedule to the Order and the works are listed in the Second Schedule.
My purpose in praying against the Order is twofold in the main. First, I want to enable the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to give me in some detail the reasons for adding these works and noxious gases to the list and to answer some of the questions which I shall put to him. Secondly, I am glad of an opportunity of drawing attention to the work which is done by the Alkali Inspectorate and the watchful care they have over new and dangerous processes.
I am mindful of our discussions during the passage in Committee of the Clean Air Act in 1956 when it was agreed that there should be an appreciable increase in the number of the Inspectorate. This has been achieved. Certainly in my own constituency there are now two resident where we had none. The nearest used to be in Birmingham, quite a distance from Stoke-on-Trent.
Having achieved an increase in number, I should also like to say that my study of the problem leads me to believe that men of this calibre are difficult to recruit. They are very highly skilled, and, indeed, they have to be in order to give the public protection from so many of these new products that appear from time to time and which are so dangerous.
In article 4 of the Order I find that the definition of "Caustic Soda Works" has been extended by adding paragraph (b) which refers to

black liquor produced in the manufacture of paper…calcined in the recovery of caustic soda.
I have looked at the Reports of the Chief Inspector for England and for Scotland in 1960. In the Scottish Report there is mention of the emission of dark smoke and fumes from one factory. First, how is it that the process is covered in Scotland, and has been so covered for some time, but not in England, and that England now has to be covered in the Order? Secondly, how many factories manufacture paper in this way? I gather that it is made from esparto grass, which creates a pretty offensive black smoke as well as a mist. I am not sure whether there is a mist, but certainly black smoke results. Offences are taking place every day in English factories. Perhaps that is why the Order is presented. I should like some details about that.
It is said in the 1960 Report on English factories that until coal is no longer used in firing the crucibles and until some other fuel is found we may not be able to solve this problem of black smoke being emitted. Have any steps been taken to see whether some other fuel is available which could be used satisfactorily?
I notice that at the bottom of the list one of the gases mentioned is carbon-monoxide. This gas, a deadly gas, of course, is emitted in certain iron and carbonisation processes. I should like details of what action has been taken to ensure that this gas is so diffused that it is not dangerous to people living in the vicinity where it is emitted. What sort of stacks are being used? Is the gas being burned or merely dissipated from a high stack?
I should like to refer to the fumes containing sodium, potassium or their compounds. These processes were listed in the 1958 Order with reference to smoke, grit or dust. Now they are listed with reference to fumes. What new features cause them to be mentioned with reference to fumes? Is the problem the salt glazing of earthenware drainpipes from which acid emissions and a salt mist are produced? Mention was made in the 1960 Report to the need for chimneys of a height of at least 120 ft. in order to disperse these emissions so that there is safety for those who live


in the vicinity. First, have any chimneys of this height been constructed for this purpose? Secondly, in salt glazing, which is responsible for this chlorine or hydro-chloric acid mist, has no substitute been found for salt to overcome a dangerous nuisance?
I now wish to ask questions about the three metallic substances, uranium, beryllium and selenium. I should have thought that these would have been listed a long time ago. It is common knowledge that they are dangerous. I do not know why so much time has elapsed before the Alkali Inspectorate has taken them under its control. It may be that the Inspectorate has always been in touch with industry informally. It is not a secret matter, for the Inspectorate has claimed that industry has invariably taken its advice throughout these years when the Inspectorate has given advice and that it has watched carefully what has been going on.
I note in the Order that the only type of uranium with which we are dealing is uranium so far as it may be a toxic material and not in its radioactive form. In other words, it is untreated. I presume that we are dealing with the processing of uranium and its refinement and preparation before it is handed over for treatment to make it radioactive. There may be other uses for uranium of which I am not aware.
I see that the Order excludes works which are licensed under the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Act, 1959, and that we exclude also nuclear reactors and operations that involve fission products from nuclear reactors. I accept that we are here treating uranium as a toxic material as if it were lead, which is also a toxic material. Are there not, however, occasions or works or processes where the danger is both from the element of uranium as a toxic material and uranium because it is also at the same time radioactive?
What does the Inspectorate do in these conditions? I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us of the care and watchfulness of the Inspectorate over the installations which are here exempted, because such care has been taken and there have been innumerable inspections. It must, however, be the

bounden duty of the Inspectorate to inspect if the metal is both toxic in the normal sense and dangerous because of radioactivity. It is a problem in the main of simple, straightforward chemical engineering, but there is the other complication that there may be times when the material is also radioactive.
Beryllium has been used to a great extent and is still greatly used for many purposes. I do not know them all, but we know that it is used in crystalline form for transistors and used in fluorescent lighting. It certainly was used as containers for the slugs of radioactive uranium. But beryllium is a very light material which allows radioactivity to pass through it easily.
I noted in the Press that I.C.I. is closing down, near Birmingham, a £1½ million beryllium installation, which suggests to me that we may have overproduced or that other materials have been found which are more suitable than beryllium for some of the purposes. It is, however, an extremely toxic material in its fume form. It is about 250 times as toxic as the trioxide of arsenic. That being the case, the very greatest care has to be taken.
I do not think that we have had any deaths in this country, but that is partly because we were able to gain an advantage by virtue of what happened in the United States. There, the first cases of poisoning were reported in 1943 and 400 cases of lung disease were described in 1949. Not only was sickness and death found in the factories, but a number of people were affected who lived in the neighbourhood of the factories amongst the ordinary population outside. Therefore, I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary—and it is a rather strange question to ask—how is it and why is it we have been able to escape damage, as we certainly have done? What methods of filtration are in use, and how is it that anything contained in the fumes is filtered out and taken away so that the public is not affected?
Selenium is a substance listed here, and it also is very toxic, affecting particularly the lungs and trachea. It is as toxic as cadmium which, for some strange reason, is not listed this year. I would have thought it would have been. It may be that the Parliamentary Secretary, if this would not be out of order,


could give us some assurance that cadmium, which caused quite a number of deaths in this country until recently when we discovered its danger, will be listed and brought under the full care of the Alkali Inspectorate. I ask what are the preventive methods in use against selenium. How are these surplus compounds disposed of? If they are pumped into a stream they poison cattle which drink the water downstream. If they are burned they give off gas which is extremely offensive because of its garlic-like stench.
I have asked a number of questions, perhaps too many, but I would say lastly that I am not asking them because I have not the highest respect for the Alkali Inspectorate, but because I think it is a good thing that we should have as much assurance as possible. I should like to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary that the Alkali Inspectorate will be increased in number and not allowed ever to fall in numbers, and that acceptance will be given to the fact that they have to have very rare qualifications and that they are, therefore, difficult to recruit, and that, therefore, their salary scales and conditions of work will be such that we shall always get at least the protection we have had up to now.

10.27 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I rise to welcome an Order which expands the provisions of Section 27 of the Alkali, &c. Works Regulation Act, 1906, and Section 17 of the Clean Air Act, 1956. Of course, this is evidence, contained in this Order, of the progressive thought which the Ministry of Housing and Local Government shows in watching new developments which may give rise in the industrial sphere to the emission of noxious fumes and asphyxiatory gases from a variety of processes in industry.
We had some lengthy discussion of these matters during the passage of the Clean Air Bill in 1956, and on that occasion a good deal of apprehension was expressed as to the adequacy of the Alkali Inspectorate to deal with these very difficult chemical and associated processes, having regard to the very thinness of the Inspectorate on the ground at that time. I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary, there

fore, a number of questions about the strength and efficacy of the Alkali Inspectorate today and its competence numerically and otherwise to deal with the very substantial number of additional establishments which will fall within its ambit of responsibility if this Order is passed by the House.
Would the Parliamentary Secretary tell us how many establishments prior to the laying of this Order came within Section 27 of the 1906 Act and Section 17 of the Clean Air Act and how many additional establishments there will be brought within the jurisdiction of the Alkali Inspectorate as a result of this Order, if it is approved by the Hausa tonight? That is my first question to him. The second question arising from that is, what expansion of the Alkali Inspectorate has taken place in the last five years since questions were asked of the Minister or his predecessor in 1956, and what further expansion of the Alkali Inspectorate is now envisaged as a result of the substantial increase in the number of establishments to be controlled if this Order is approved?
It is not an insignificant list, for example, in the Second Schedule. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Dr. Stross) has briefly named all the processes concerned, but they are very difficult and technical processes and will occupy a great deal of attention on the part of the Alkali Inspectorate. I would not like the Parliamentary Secretary to reply in a sense that the existing Inspectorate will be capable and competent, having regard to the small numbers within the Inspectorate, to control this large addition to the number of establishments.
My third question to the Parliamentary Secretary is in connection with beryllium. As far as I am aware, beryllium has been made only at the Imperial Chemical Industries metals division at Witton, Birmingham. That plant is to be closed. As far as I am aware, there is no other plant in the country making beryllium and, presumably, if that plant is to be shut down the process is regarded as obsolescent. As beryllium made an important contribution to nuclear and other process and manufactures, I should like my hon. Friend to say what processes are to take the place


of beryllium in I.C.I. or elsewhere and why they are not listed in this Order as replacement processes.
My fourth question is a curious one and is in connection with the listing in the First Schedule of carbon monoxide. The emission of carbon monoxide from static works establishments is relatively tiny compared with the huge volume of carbon monoxide put into the atmosphere through the exhausts of vehicles, What is the Parliamentary Secretary endeavouring to cover here by the words "carbon monoxide"? Do they cover diesel powered units in factories, for example, which are equivalent to a diesel engine in a heavy commercial vehicle? If it is that kind of plant in a factory emitting carbon monoxide that he is seeking to bring within the ambit of the powers of the Alkali Inspectorate, why is it not possible for the Government to extend it to cover the major nuisance, which is the emission of the same carbon monoxide in huge volumes from the exhausts of diesel oil powered commercial vehicles on our roads?
My hon. Friend is attacking here the tiny nuisance in the emission of carbon monoxide from fixed, static plants in factories and neglecting to observe or cover under this Act or elsewhere the major nuisance of the emission of these fumes in large quantities, often in confined places, which, particularly in hot weather, cause such a grave nuisance to urban communities and in built-up areas.
With these questions, I should like to thank the Minister of Housing and Local Government for keeping a very watchful eye on an essential part of the clean air legislation, for continuously bringing up to date the processes that are responsible for singularly noxious fumes in industry, and for observing meticulously those recent processes which may give rise to the greatest inconvenience and nuisance in the vicinity of works emitting noxious fumes by bringing them within the ambit of the 1906 Act and Section 6 of the Clean Air Act, 1956.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. R. E. Winterbottom: There are one or two questions that I want to ask in connection with the Order, and they are principally questions that relate to the City of

Sheffield, which has been very conspicuous in all discussions concerning clean air. There are one or two questions that I should like to ask because of the interest that I took in the subject at the time that we dealt with the Clean Air Act.
I should like to know whether or not the Clean Air Council is still in being, whether or not it has examined the matters contained in the Order and whether or not it has functioned in its purposes as provided for in the Act and made recommendations to the Minister. As originally conceived, the Council was one of the things of great value that came out of the Act, and I should not like to think that it had fallen into desuetude.
With regard to the First Schedule and the question of carbon monoxide, I agree with all that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) has said, but that has not completely eliminated the carbon monoxide emitted in soot by factories. By reason of their location, certain factories can become rather dangerous to industrial conurbations. In my constituency a new factory has been erected to make gas from oil, and as a result of the process 10 tons of carbon monoxide per day are emitted into the atmosphere. I grant that the prevailing winds take most of the effluent away from the industrial conurbation. During the planning it was decided to build a chimney higher than the 120 ft. suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross)—in fact, to 180 ft.—but that has not completely destroyed the effect of that type of effluent.
I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to bring to the notice of the Clean Air Council and the Minister the need to keep a close scrutiny over establishments of this kind where gas is made from oil and emissions of this kind occur, especially where it is not possible to carry out washing of the effluent to limit the amount of carbon monoxide emitted. The Minister should ensure that such factories are not built close to industrial conurbations.
I have no quarrel with the Second Schedule. In fact, only one point arises out of the Order. Under Section 17 (2) of the Clean Air Act special permission could be given by the Minister for towns and cities which proved that they had


made provision to have complete or partial control of their area. Sheffield was granted partial control over its atmosphere. There were certain restrictions at the time, certain matters being left in the hands of the Alkali Inspectorate. My question is about the application of this Order to the Order made to deal with the special conditions of Sheffield and how much of it will be controlled by the municipal abatement authorities, covering not only Sheffield but other districts in the vicinity. How much of the control will remain with the clean air committee centralised in Sheffield?
I do not say that because we want a clear line of demarcation between the duties of the authorities in Sheffield and those of the Alkali Inspectorate. I do not want to suggest that there is any confusion between the two. Since the special dispensation given to Sheffield, the arrangements between the Sheffield authorities and the Inspectorate have been first-class. With the co-operation of the Fuel and Power Group in Sheffield University, they have been making a worth-while contribution to the cause of clean air in Sheffield. However, I do want to know how Sheffield's authority stands with this Order.
When we began discussing clean air legislation, when the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) introduced his Private Member's Clean Air Bill, the Inspectorate numbered seven. The intention of the Clean Air Act was to increase that number to 13. How many are now employed? It was appreciated when we passed the Act, especially when we dealt with Section 17 (2), that the Inspectorate was grossly under-staffed to do the jab we had placed on its shoulders. Are there now sufficient qualified alkali inspectors to do the work?

10.43 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: The abject of the Order is to extend the classes of fumes which are included in the list of noxious or offensive gases—that is done in the First Schedule—and, in the Second Schedule, to include the types of works which are mentioned in the Schedule of the Alkali &c. Works Regulation Act, 1906, and therefore subject to inspection. That may be the intention of the Order, but its effect

will depend on the Inspectorate in charge of these matters, that is, the Alkali Inspectorate, which is responsible to the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
I see from the Estimates that for the coming year the Alkali Inspectorate is to consist of a chief and two deputy chiefs, twelve district and ten other inspectors—although at the moment there are only seven inspectors. From the Second Schedule of the Order one finds that the uranium works which are included are those which are not works licensed under the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Act, 1959. But those latter works, which are also uranium works but not included for this purpose, are inspected in their turn by another inspectorate, the Inspectors of Nuclear Installations. This is a body somewhat more formidable than the Alkali Inspectorate and, again according to the Estimates, consists of a chief and two assistant, five principal, fourteen senior and twelve other inspectors, all the latter twelve being a innovation for the coming year. So we have, on the one hand, a total manpower of 25 alkali inspectors, including chiefs, and on the other, 44 inspectors of nuclear installations.
The point is that the inspectors of nuclear installations are to go into uranium works for the purpose of seeing whether they are dangerous or not, while, from a different point of view, the alkali inspectors are to go in for the purpose of ascertaining whether they are dangerous because they emit noxious substances within, I understand, the meaning and intention of the clear air legislation. The result appears to be that one set of uranium works—those concerned with nuclear installations—are to be inspected for one purpose by one set of inspectors while they will be inspected for another purpose by the other set of inspectors.
What is to happen if uranium works "do the dirty" on the Government, and those which are being inspected for one kind of danger proceed to cause the other danger? What if there are noxious and offensive gases emanating from uranium works being inspected by inspectors of nuclear installations or there are atomic emissions of some sort from those being inspected by the alkali inspectors? What


appears to be a somewhat frivolous question is a very real one. We do not want, by some distinction between departments and inspectors, to avoid danger in one place and encourage it in another.
I would have thought it doubtful that we should want two sets of inspectors for uranium works. I see that their functions are slightly different, but these are very highly qualified men. There appears to be considerable difficulty, certainly in recruiting alkali inspectors, whose shortage for the past few years has been notorious. They are excellent when we get them, but there are not enough of them. As far as I can see, inspectors of nuclear installations may be in the same position. I notice that the junior grades are all to be new. I do not know how the figure of a dozen was arrived at, but a dozen are to be new in the coming year.
All this indicates that an addition was necessary and that the number previously working was quite insufficient for the job. Perhaps the Joint Parliamentary Secretary can tell us why it is that there are two separate sets of inspectors, how it is that, in both cases, their numbers have been short, and what he proposes to do to deal with the divergence of functions and the possibilities of works going "naughty" in emitting the wrong sort of danger which I have indicated. If the Government did the wrong thing under the nuclear installations legislation, why do they continue to do the wrong thing under the Clean Air Act? Here I should point out that the divergence in the penalties under the two Acts seems to be rather odd, especially as both deal with uranium works.
How on earth do the Government and their advisers manage to leave carbon monoxide out? I should have thought this the most obvious thing to put in. I can reassure the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro). It is not the Ministry of Housing and Local Government but the Ministry of Transport which is causing total stoppage of traffic in London and is, therefore, dealing with any questions of emission of dangerous fumes from motor vehicles. More seriously, however,—carbon monoxide is something which might well happen and does happen in many industrial processes and should certainly have been considered to be amongst noxious gases.

Mr. Nabarro: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman has missed my point—

Mr. Mitchison: I have often missed the hon. Gentleman's point, but when I have risen to interrupt him he has invariably refused to give way and I am going to do the same tonight. If he will treat me a bit better, I will treat him a bit better.
I turn from that to the Second Schedule. Here we are dealing with uranium, beryllium and selenium. Uranium and beryllium, at any rate, are closely connected with nuclear reactors. I am quoting from The Three Banks Review and from an article written in it by the Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board and, I think, of the Atomic Energy Authority, too—no, I beg the pardon of the House, I see that that is not so. I refer to Sir Christopher Hinton, who, at any rate, is a well-known authority on these matters. He says:
Present reactor practice takes both the uranium and the magnesium alloy
to a certain heat and containing it in cans of beryllium or stainless steel. Then he goes on to point out that there are difficulties about the use of beryllium and stainless steel as canning materials, and the result is that both have been tried and, as the hon. Member for Kidderminster pointed out, the manufacture of beryllium in the only place where one knows it to have been manufactured has recently been discontinued.
Where we are dealing with beryllium and uranium, is it possible to draw a clear line between cases where its manufacture may result in the noxious fumes of the kind we are dealing with tonight and cases where the material or its handling may result in perils which are called nuclear perils—or radiation perils if hon. Members prefer? One of the main uses of these two materials at any rate, and certainly the one most publicly known, is in connection with nuclear installations, and it seems very odd that they should be dealt with by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and managed as it were under this Order.
I am glad to see that the Parliamentary Secretary for Science is sitting next to the Parliamentary Secretary to the


Ministry of Housing and Local Government. I should like to know what steps are taken to consult the Ministry for Science before decisions are made as to the type of inspectorate and the type of danger which is involved in installations of this kind. Has there been full consultation, and what was said? It would be interesting to know. Did they and do they cordially support the rather remarkable division which I have just indicated?
Lastly, I turn to selenium. I come to it in a spirit of inquiry. I once had to deal with it for many many long days in a piece of litigation. I have never forgotten it. Its peculiarity appeared to be that its conductivity of electric current varied with its exposure to light. For that reason it had a use in the making of photo-electric cells. But it had another peculiarity, that it was about the most unstable element one could possibly find. I should like very much to know what happens in the manufacture of selenium and what it is used for. Is it entirely for photo-electric cells, and is it really the case that in the process of decomposition—like some Government or another—it emits a number of noxious fumes? I shall be interested to learn a little more about the material.
I have a feeling that this Order may well be justifiable. It is somewhat unintelligible in its language and even more unintelligible when one tries to find out what it is about. I think that my hon. Friends and myself have been perfectly right to pray for its annulment, not in the expectation that it would be annulled, but in order to elicit the real purpose of the Order; whether it is the right instrument for the purpose and whether the public are being properly protected both against the dirty air, in the sense of air containing noxious fumes, and against dirty air in the sense of air which may contain some dangerous radiation. I hope that I do not sound too suspicious in what I am saying, but I think we owe a duty to the public to raise these things.

10.55 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): I perfectly well understand that hon. Members on both sides of the House

welcome this Order but at the same time are naturally anxious to discuss its effect. I think everyone who has participated in this debate is fully conscious of the importance of the subject.
I can assure the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Winterbottom) that the Clean Air Council still functions. It is very active. In Sheffield the powers and duties under any Order made under Section 17 (2) of the Clean Air Act will not be affected. I appreciated, and I am sure that the Alkali Inspectorate will appreciate, the remarks of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) about its members. They are highly skilled people. Their job calls for great knowledge of technical matters. I feel by no means comfortable standing here as an expert witness on some of these matters with which they deal so easily. As the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), they now number twenty-five. That is not a great many for the job they do, but in the nature of things the skills they employ make it difficult to recruit people of the right calibre.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster said that this Order marks a stage in our efforts to secure clean air. It is an example of progressive thought in our Ministry. I hope that "progressive" is not a dirty ward to many hon. Members present. We have indeed come a very long way since the first Chief Alkali Inspector began his report in 1872 with the wards:
In former years when I reported on the escape of muriatic acid from alkali works, being rather weary of the monotony as well as the narrowness of the subject I commenced inquiries into other gases
Just how much has happened since then is illustrated by Stoke-on-Trent. There in 1938 there were 2,000 coal-fired bottle kilns. When the 1958 Alkali Order became operative there were 295 and today there are about 100. The number will be further reduced. The final disappearance of the bottle kiln will see the end of this nuisance of the smoke problem in the pottery industry. That is why we are able to make further progress.
The medical officer of the Local Government Board in 1878, talking


about Stoke-on-Trent vomiting black smoke from chimneys, said:
Certainly it is not conducive to mental exhilaration and, inasmuch as it fouls the skin and clothing and sometimes compels householders to close the windows of their houses to keep it out, must be on these accounts alone unfavourable to public health, especially among children and classes of persons not much given to ablution.
We have come some way in Stoke-on-Trent since those days.

Dr. Stross: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out how much has been done in Stoke-on-Trent. Is he aware that the atmosphere has been now so much improved there that I think it is a little better than that of Kensington?

Mr. Rippon: I hope that the paint-work of the Civic Trust project is still as bright as when I last saw it.
As the House knows, where a works is listed as registrable under the Alkali &c. Works Regulation Act, 1906, the best practicable means must be used to prevent it from emitting the noxious and offensive gases listed in the Act or now, under Section 17 of the Clean Air Act, 1956, smoke grit and dust.
Section 4 of the Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act, 1926, as extended by Section 17 of the 1956 Act gives the Minister of Housing and Local Government power to make Orders extending the list of registrable works and the list of noxious or offensive gases in the Alkali Act. Before making such an order my right hon. Friend must consult the local authorities and the other responsible interests concerned, and he must hold a public inquiry. It is perhaps of interest to know that in this case there were no objections to the Draft Order and that when we held the public inquiry it lasted only sixteen minutes. That may satisfy the House that the Order is welcome to the local authority associations, trade associations and other interested parties.
The Order does three things. First, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central pointed out, it adds beryllium works, selenium works, and certain uranium works to the list of works registrable, and the fumes containing beryllium, selenium or uranium or their compounds to the list of noxious or offensive gases.
I agree with what the hon. Member said about the toxic nature of these gases. Beryllium is 250 times as toxic as arsenic, selenium is five times as toxic and uranium is twice as toxic. Beryllium and selenium are rare and costly materials. The hon. Member talked about overproduction. I am told that fabricated beryllium costs about £300,000 a ton. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are not many producers, but even after I.C.I. have dropped out of the business, it may be of comfort to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering to know, there will still be some works left in this country which will be covered by this Order.

Mr. Mitchison: What is it used for?

Mr. Rippon: It is a very light metal, and I understand that it is principally used for alloying with copper. It is used for containers for uranium slugs. It is used in small aircraft parts and in matters of that kind.
Selenium, as the hon. and learned Member pointed out, is used principally in the electrical industry. Most of the uranium processes involve hazards which are primarily radioactive and, therefore, they are controllable under the Atomic Energy Authority Act, 1954, and the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Act, 1959, and they will be controllable under the Radioactive Substances Act, 1960. There are, however, a handful of works with which this Order deals which are processing uranium and in which the hazard is primarily toxic. This Order brings them formally under the Alkali Act.

Mr. Winterbottom: May I probe this a little deeper? If these ores are used in an electric are furnace under 30 tons, how is it that they do not come under the Sheffield Order, for the Order specifically gives power in respect of an electric are furnace under 30 tons?

Mr. Rippon: I am afraid that I cannot debate what is in the Sheffield Order under Section 17 (2) of the Clean Air Act, 1956. All I can say about this Order is that it does not affect whatever powers Sheffield may have succeeded in securing under that statutory provision.
As the hon. and learned Member for Kettering pointed out, the Second


Schedule provides that the Order excludes uranium works which are licensed under the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Act, 1959, as well as other nuclear reactors and operations involving fission products from nuclear reactors where any hazards are essentially of a radioactive nature. Both he and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central asked what the position was in respect of factories where both processes were involved: first, processes where the hazards were fundamentally of a radioactive nature and, secondly, processes where the hazards were fundamentally of a toxic nature. I understand that in this case administrative arrangements have been made which will ensure that any requirements imposed under the Alkali Act are consistent with the requirements imposed under other Statutes to safeguard against radioactive risks.
It would be quite wrong to think that nothing has been done about any of these matters before the Order will come into force. In the absence of Statutory powers, the Alkali Inspectorate has on my right hon. Friend's instructions kept in close touch with the industries concerned with these three products. Managements are always willing to cooperate, and very satisfactory standards have been achieved. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central asked why we in this country had not had the damaging effects which have been noticed elsewhere. As a result of these informal arrangements, we have managed to achieve a very high degree of efficiency. Any emissions are filtered very thoroughly. The protection is absolute—99·9 per cent. plus. The fact that the Inspectorate's advice has been invariably accepted and the fact that these informal arrangements work satisfactorily is no reason why the informal arrangements should not be replaced by the proper Statutory methods. That is the reason for the Order.
The second thing the Order does is to add carbon monoxide and sodium and potassium fumes to the noxious or offensive gases the emission of which from registrable works comes under the provisions of the Alkali Act. What happened was this. The 1958 Order brought under the Alkali Act a large number of new processes because they

emitted smoke, grit and dust. As a result of the expertise of our Inspectorate going round and doing this job, it has been found that besides emitting smoke, grit and dust some of these processes emit gases which are noxious or offensive but are not formally so listed in the Act. The mischief against which the Order is directed is the emission of carbon monoxide which is evolved during certain iron and carbonisation processes, sodium and potassium compounds evolved during the salt glazing of earthenware—so far as I know, no alternative process can be employed in regard to salt glazing—and sodium compounds evolved in certain aluminium processes. Here again, and with the ready co-operation of the industry, the Inspectorate has been taking steps to ensure that the emission of these gases is properly controlled. Here again, the Order is merely putting into formal Statutory form what is already being done.
The third thing the Order does is to extend the definition of caustic soda works so as to bring under the Alkali Act a process used by paper mills producing pulp from esparto grass which involves the emission of dark smoke and fumes. I understand that about twenty-five works are affected. I am told that these emissions are more of a nuisance than a danger to public health, so there have not been the same informal arrangements in this case.
I was asked why Scotland had got in first. I thought that it looked as if Scotland was quicker off the mark, but in fact Scotland was slower. The English 1958 Order came out first, and this process was omitted from it. The Scottish Order was later and, therefore, more up to date in this respect. It is only this one matter which is covered in Scotland at the moment, but I understand that it is intended in due course to bring the other matters covered by the present Order under the Alkali Act in Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster asked a specific question about the I.C.I. works. I am informed by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for Science—the hon. and learned Member for Kettering will be glad to hear that we are in very close contact about these matters—that the Atomic Energy Authority had hoped to


use beryllium containers for fuel elements in the advanced gas-cooled reactor now being developed at Windscale, but it found that some of the beryllium problems are insoluble. The Authority decided to use stainless steel instead. Hence, it is negotiating with I.C.I. and another firm to close down the beryllium works, on payment of adequate compensation, which seems reasonable and proper. As I said, there are still other beryllium works which will be covered by this Order.

Mr. Nabarro: Would my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary apply himself to a major question that I asked? The Government have put into this Order carbon monoxide, thereby seeking to control the emission of noxious carbon monoxide produced from static plants such as auto-diesel sets employed in factories. Why are the Government neglecting the major nuisance, notably in urban areas, of the huge emission of carbon monoxide from diesel oil-powered vehicles?

Mr. Speaker: That is outside the scope of the debate on this Order, so far as I can see.

Mr. Rippon: Let us hope we can debate it on another Order one of these days. I appreciate that I may not have covered all the technical matters which have been put before me. I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his Motion in the hope that our next Order will be even better.

Dr. Stross: In view of the reply which we have received, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — DISABLED PERSONS (MOTOR CARS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

11.12 p.m.

Mr. Eric Johnson: There was an Adjournment debate on the subject of motor cars for the disabled on 17th May, 1960, when the matter was raised by the right hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards). The subject was also discussed

in greater detail in the course of a debate in June of the same year on a Motion moved by the same right hon. Gentleman.
My reason for wishing to return to this question tonight is that it seems to me that the position of the availability of motor cars for the disabled has changed since that time. I should like to illustrate the need for a change of policy in this matter by mentioning the case of two constituents of mine. They are a married couple. They are not war pensioners, but they have each been allotted a powered invalid tricycle, and they would much prefer to have, instead of those two tricycles, a two-seater car between them.
When I first wrote to my hon. Friend about this last July the husband alone had a tricycle. He wanted to change it for a two-seater car, which he was obviously not able to do at that time, on the ground that his wife was an invalid. She could hardly walk at all. She could not go about her shopping in the normal way and he wanted to be able to take her in the car with him.
However, since then, in August, the wife was allotted an invalid tricycle. I pointed this out to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and suggested that it would be much more convenient and, it seemed to me, much more sensible to provide them, if it were possible, with one car instead of two tricycles, because it seems rather absurd to me, as I think most people would agree, that when this husband and wife want to go out together they have to set out from their two separate garages on their two separate tricycles instead of going together in one two-seater car. I understand that the cost of the maintenance of the two tricycles is appreciably more than that of one car.
On 4th December, I asked a Question about this matter, which was answered by my hon. Friend, and other hon. Members besides myself asked a number of supplementary questions. On 11th December, I asked a further Question and two supplementary questions, and I received a Written Answer to yet another.
As a result of this series of Questions and Answers we got this information. We learned that the provision of cars


had been traditionally part of the preferential treatment for war pensioners. My hon. Friend said she thought there was still a general feeling that war pensioners should have a preferential treatment, but she also told us that it would be cheaper to supply one car than two tricycles. As a result of the second batch of Questions, we discovered that in 1960 and 1961, taken together, 23 additional married couples were provided with tricycles, but that in 17 of those cases one of the partners already had one. During the same period, 1,636 cars were provided for disabled war pensioners, and my hon. Friend said there was no difficulty about getting an adequate supply of those cars.
Then when I asked my hon. Friend if she could give any reason, other than the principle of giving preference to the war disabled, why the Minister should not allow married couples to have one car instead of two tricycles if they so desired., she replied that she had said the previous week that it was better in many circumstances for two disabled people to have two vehicles because they were then both independent. That well may be so, but what my hon. Friend ignored was the fact that I had asked her if they might have one car instead of two tricycles if they preferred it, and when I pointed this out all she said was that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health was not prepared to make an exception.
Let me sum up the position. As a result of those Questions it would appear that even if all the married couples who have received tricycles during the past two years had ventured to suppose that they knew better than my hon. Friend what sort of vehicle was best suited to their requirements and they had been supplied with a car per couple instead of with two tricycles, it would have meant that only 23 more cars would have been needed in a period when 1,636 cars were supplied to the war disabled pensioners and there was no difficulty in getting enough cars.
If there had been a shortage of cars I would have been perfectly prepared to accept the principle that the war disabled should have preference, but I find it hard to believe that by preferential treatment my hon. Friend means that these cars should be withheld from those

disabled people who are not war pensioners, even if cars are available, in order that it may be said that war pensioners are being better treated than those who are otherwise disabled. I do not think my hon. Friend would really believe in that principle, and I am sure it is not one to which war pensioners themselves would subscribe.
My hon. Friend has admitted that the cost of two tricycles is more than that of one car. It would not be surprising in the least if I found she was resisting the request for two tricycles on the grounds that it was necessary to keep down Government expenditure, but here she is insisting on spending more when the people who want the vehicle are in fact asking her to spend less.
When I first wrote to my hon. Friend about this matter last July she referred me to a statement made on 4th April, 1960, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), who was at that time Minister of Health, and it was to the effect that it had been decided to provide cars for those war pensioners disabled in the service of their country who were eligible for Government power-propelled tricycles; but that the only civilian war pensioners included were those who were disabled in the service of their country as members of the Civil Defence organisations, and who sustained injuries while on duty.
Tonight I want to ask whether my hon. Friend will reconsider the whole question of cars for the disabled, and, if she does not feel able to go as far as agreeing that it is possible to provide cars for all disabled persons who now qualify for invalid tricycles, whether she could not at least see whether that could be done in the case of married couples who both qualify for such a tricycle. It seems to me that that is something which could be done without legislation, otherwise I would not have ventured to suggest it in an Adjournment debate.
In the Adjournment debate on 17th May, 1960, my hon. Friend explained the possible legal difficulty as to whether a small car which could carry passengers came within the meaning of Section 3 (1, b) of the National Health Service Act, 1946. The relevant words are:
…medical, nursing and other services required at or for the purposes of hospitals.


The right hon. Member for Caerphilly in that debate asked, very reasonably, why it was possible to provide a three-wheeled vehicle under that form of words and it was not possible to provide one with four wheels.
It might be preferable for the sake of accuracy if I quoted my hon Friend's exact words in reply to that proposal. They were:
The view taken by the legal department of my Ministry is roughly this. With some straining of the language of the Section, it can be held that a tricycle has a connection with hospital treatment and that its provision is a hospital purpose. It can be regarded as an appliance for a disabled man receiving hospital services, akin to artificial limbs or crutches.
It seems to us, however, that there is a great distinction between an invalid tricycle and a car in the context of Part II of the National Health Service Act. The use of a car would, in substance, be a welfare service not limited to medical needs or the treatment of the patient himself. It would provide not merely transport for the patient but transport for his family and friends as well.
My hon Friend said later:
…it is not for the House to decide what a Statute means once it is enacted. That falls within the province of the courts. The question whether cars should or should not be provided for the disabled generally is, however, a matter for Parliament to discuss…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May, 1960; Vol. 623, c. 1244.]
I do not believe that my hon. Friend's argument would hold good in the case of a married couple both of whom had qualified for tricycles, because it seems to me that the car, if they were provided with it, would be an appliance just the same as a tricycle would be, but it would be an appliance provided for the use of two patients at the same time. It would be just as much an appliance as the two tricycles would be. Anyway, if the Minister saw fit, would there by any reason why, if he were able to grant this request, he should not restrict the use of the car to the couple themselves and provide it for them only on that understanding?
What then remains of my hon. Friend's case against granting my request? Nothing except perhaps that, irrespective of what the disabled couple may think would suit them, the lady in Saville Row knows best. That attitude would be so uncharacteristic of my hon. Friend that I look forward to hearing her reply that she has found it possible to do

something which in her heart of hearts I know she would like to do, and that is to accept my plea for disabled couples.

11.25 p.m.

Mr. A. Bourne-Arton: I will not trespass more than a moment on the time of the House to add a postscript to the eloquent plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. E. Johnson) about the husband and wife who are both entitled to tricycles.
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary may recall a constituency case of mine in which both the husband and the wife were disabled and each was entitled to a tricycle. Unhappily, one of them—the wife, I think—was incapacitated to such an extent that she was incapable of driving a tricycle. Instead of their having the two tricycles to which they were entitled, I begged my hon. Friend to see whether the regulations might be so stretched that they could have a two-seater vehicle.
On that occasion my hon. Friend felt obliged to be guided by the strict letter of the regulations rather than, as I have no doubt she would have wished, the warmth of her heart, but I hope that she and my right hon. Friend, when reconsidering this matter, as I hope they will in the light of this debate, will feel that it is not perhaps illogical that a husband and wife both of whom are entitled to a vehicle and only one of whom is capable of driving may be considered eligible for a two-seater car.

11.26 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Edith Pitt): My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. E. Johnson) has anticipated a number of points which I must give him in reply. That means, of course, that we have covered much of this ground before. But I still think it necessary, in order to put into perspective his plea for special consideration for married couples who are both eligible for an invalid tricycle from my Ministry, to remind him and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Bourne-Arton) that at present the Department has issued 12,667 tricycles to National Health Service patients in England and Wales. This comprises


10,302 petrol driven tricycles and 2,365 electrically driven. There are some people who qualify but have not the physical capacity to control a petrol driven vehicle, and to them we supply an electrically driven one. Also, the total number on issue increases at the rate of about 550 vehicles a year.
Power to provide these vehicles derives, as my hon. Friend reminded us, from Section 3 (1) (b) of the National Health Service Act, and—it is important that we should be quite clear on this point—that Section enables my right hon. Friend to provide
medical, nursing and other services required at or for the purposes of hospitals.
With that power, the vehicles are supplied under administrative rules laid down by my Department which define the categories of eligibility.
The categories are: First, and, therefore, most important, the double leg amputation with one amputation above the knee; second, patients suffering from paraplegia or other defect of the locomotor system equivalent to the total or almost total loss of the use of both legs so that the patient is to all intents and purposes unable to walk; third, patients similarly but slightly less severely disabled, still with very limited walking ability, who because of the disability need a machine to get to and from work—often referred to as the earning category.
It is true—again, I think that all hon. Members know this—that we provide tricycles and motor cars for war pensioners; but those are provided under powers contained in Article 23 of the Royal Warrant of 1949, and I must repeat that we have always maintained a traditional preference for war pensioners. It has always been felt that we should be as generous as possible to those people who have been disabled in the service of their country, and even today there has not been a change in that feeling of generosity and of preference towards war pensioners. However, I emphasise that in that respect we are enabled to do so under entirely different powers.
Over the years, we have steadily improved the tricycle which we provide for National Health Service patients. We are at all times looking for further improvements in this vehicle. We have

come a long way from the old hand-propelled tricycle with a motor attachment and only an apron as weather protection, which some hon. Members will remember seeing on the streets years ago. Our present vehicle has a modern saloon body and an improved and self-starting engine.
It is sometimes suggested that, failing our being able to provide cars for National Health Service patients, we should convert our present single-seater tricycle to a two-seater, but I remind hon. Members that the present tricycle was designed as a single seater. Indeed, the user is required to undertake not to carry passengers. It is true that space is allowed at the side of the vehicle—any hon. Member who has seen the modern tricycle will know that it is quite wide—but that space is provided to take a folding chair, which is often essential to the disabled person.
The tricycle might take him to the point where he wishes to disembark, but considerably disabled men often then have to transfer to a folding chair. The space at the side of the vehicle is provided to enable them to carry that folding chair. While it may be possible to adapt the existing tricycle to make it a two-seater, it would need extensive modification and it would be far from satisfactory because of the considerable developments, particularly the heavier engine, which would have to be included.
Moreover, if it were done and if it were used for the conveyance of ordinary passengers, as could happen if a two-seater were provided, it would no longer be an appliance and our present powers would not cover the provision of such an article. For the same reason, we could not provide cars for National Health Service patients. As my hon. Friend has raised this matter on the Adjournment once more, I have again sought legal advice in order to be as sure as I can on this ground. I am told that legislation would be needed if we wished to provide such vehicles under the National Health Service Acts.
My hon. Friend found an ingenious way of suggesting that we might do what he wants us to do by providing a car for a married couple when both are disabled, regarding it as an appliance made for two. But in fact it would still be


a motor car. It could be used for other purposes. No matter what might be laid down as part of the requirement for those who were to receive a car, I do not think that anything could possibly be enforced which could prevent the car from being used to all intents and purposes as an ordinary car. In those circumstances, it would not be an appliance. Indeed, the provision of a car goes further than what is needed to provide locomotion for individual disabled patients. I do not think that it should be regarded as a proper adjunct to a service primarily concerned with treatment.
My hon. Friend referred to possible cost. In this case, in the context of providing cars for National Health Service patients, in the debates to which he referred, I and other speakers gave an estimate of the cost. We said it would be about £2½ million, with additional maintenance, after spreading out the programme of replacement of the tricycles by cars—and we visualised a period of years for replacement—at about £1 million. But I think now—and the more I think about it the surer I am—that the cost would probably be very much greater and that the figures we have given probably represent a considerable under-estimate.

Mr. E. Johnson: Did not my hon. Friend tell me in an Answer to a Question that the cost of one car was less and that it would only apply to a very small number of cars for married couples?

Miss Pitt: That is true. I did so inform my hon. Friend. But he cannot look at this in isolation and think in terms only of the few people who would be covered if it were possible to accede to his request to do it where married couples qualify. We should have to visualise a very substantial development if that were possible. I want also, for one moment, to emphasise that there are still a number of people who prefer tricycles. Some National Health Service patients, for instance, are admitted to football matches if they are in their tricycles. They feel that they are independent. Even those war service pensioners who have cars are not always happy in having to have a nominated

driver, who may not always be available when wanted. Will my hon. Friends be surprised when I say that, under the extension of the car scheme for war pensioners, one in ten of those eligible have opted to keep tricycles because they prefer them?
I come now to the cases where husband and wife are eligible. There are, under the National Health Service, 79 married couples who have Ministry motor tricycles. I understand the sympathy that their plight commands. I understand that both my hon. Friends are pressing hard for these cases. But, as I have already indicated, we have no power to make an exception. I stress the point I made in my answer to my hon. Friend's Parliamentary Question on this subject. I think that Members thought then that I was being light hearted, but I am serious in saying that it is easy to overlook the importance of independent mobility in the case of married couples. Indeed, in some circumstances, having a car would deprive one partner of the mobility which is the whole purpose of the scheme. For instance, if the husband went to work, he would take the car and the wife would be housebound, if unable to drive him to and from work. In some cases the wife would not be able to retain the car.
I know of one case where the wife can drive an electrically propelled vehicle but I do not think she could drive a car. Few people with electric vehicles are able to drive a car safely. Although it might be thought that, if a car were available, married couples could easily arrange outings, it would actually mean some restriction of their movement and of their independence. In the case of the married couple in my hon. Friend's constituency, it is true that both now qualify for a tricycle. The wife is to be provided with one when storage facilities are available. Both in this case are at work, and I suppose that in theory, were a car provided, the husband could take his wife to work and then go himself to his job. Again I think that it would deny a certain amount of independence. In fact, in October the husband wrote confirming that they had been rehoused and that the wife was willing to accept an invalid tricycle.


Previously she had said that what they wanted was a grant to enable them to purchase a car.
Although it would be cheaper to provide one car than two tricycles, and although this problem is high-lighted by the examples that my hon. Friends can quote, I think that any exception would lead to demands for further concessions from other National Health Service patients. For example, if a car were granted, perhaps the less severely disabled of the pair might possibly have the virtually unrestricted use of the car and there might be more severely disabled individuals who would still have tricycles. There have been requests for other groups to be considered as exceptions, such as industrial injury cases,

Bevin boys or miners generally. Perhaps not least, we should consider those eligible for tricycles who are unable to drive. They have no means of transport at all. Therefore, I do not think we can supply the categories mentioned or make exceptions as suggested. The present service is generally recognised as a very good one, and I think that many—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at nineteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.